Moreno, Chinese partner win archery’s mixed event

NANJING – Yes, there’s gold in Nanjing.

Filipino archer Gabriel Luis Moreno delivered the best performance of his life Sunday and won the gold in the mixed team event of the second Youth Olympic Games.

Moreno found a perfect partner in China’s Li Jiaman, and at the end of the day, the dynamic duo basked in the glory only found in the Olympics.

Under a gray afternoon sky, they stood on the podium, in the middle of the field, their gold medals hanging from their necks, and the dominant Chinese crowd cheering them on.

Moreno finished 30th among 32 male archers in the individual event while Jiaman, a pretty Chinese archer, was ranked No. 3 in the women’s side.

Nobody expected Moreno to win a medal of any color here.

Not even himself.

“I didn’t expect to win anything here. I just gave my best,” said the 16-year-old Filipino archer, who almost missed his quarterfinals match.

After the morning session, Moreno left the Fangshan Archery Field with his father and sister to have lunch somewhere.

But they got lost along the way, on their way back to the venue, and for nearly two hours they were stuck inside a taxicab, with a driver who hardly speaks English.

“I was already crying inside the cab. My father was panicking,” said the archer.

Filipino sports officials had been alerted of his late arrival, and by the time they arrived, it was just seven minutes before his 2:30 p.m. shoot.

Filipino chef-de-mission Jonne Go met Moreno at the main gate and made sure the Filipino archer wouldn’t have to go through the strict security checkpoint.

“I knew everybody had warmed up. I just concentrated,” said Moreno, who had to run to the field and to his waiting teammate.

A few more minutes late and the team that was to win the gold would have been disqualified.

“I will never do that again,” said Moreno.

“We helped each other and tried to motivate each other,” said the Chinese archer as interpreted by POC official Julian Camacho.

Jiaman said she hopes to visit the Philippines someday, and Moreno said if she ever did, he would take her to the island paradise of Boracay.

It’s the first gold medal for the Philippines in the Youth Olympics for athletes aged 14 to 18 years. In the inaugural staging of the event in 2010 in Singapore, the Philippines didn’t win a single medal.

“This is a big win for us coming from a third world country,” Moreno added.

In the finals, Moreno and Jiaman defeated Muhammad Zoklepeli of Malaysia and Cynthia Freywald of Germany, 6-0 (38-37, 38-35, 37-33).

Moreno clinched the victory with a nine on his last arrow. In the finals, he had 10s in the first and second sets. Jiaman had a 10 in each of the three sets.

The athletes from the Philippines and China swapped high fives and hugged.

In the semis against Canada’s Eric Peters and Finland’s Mirjam Tuokkola, Moreno had three straight 10s. 

Moreno was in a zone, and didn’t look like an archer ranked 30th.

The Filipino chef-de-mission was on the verge of tears after the victory.

“Nothing is impossible. If we only focus on our youth, we can achieve more in sports. And it’s not only in archery,” she said.

“We showed that we can win in the Asian Youth Games and now we won a gold in the Youth Olympics. Nasa youth athletes ang pag-asa natin,” added Go.