Tokyo Olympics: Emotional relief from modern-day plague for Philippines, rest of the world

MANILA, Philippines (The Filipino Connection) — An entire planet seeks emotional relief from a modern-day plague by witnessing the greatest show on earth from a distance.

The coronavirus-hit Tokyo Olympic Games will echo the travails that have swept the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. A Spanish flu pandemic and the economic and geopolitical rubbles of World War 1 almost scrapped the event.

TRACKER: Team Philippines at the Tokyo Olympics

Yet the Games of the 32nd Olympiad have proceeded and will formally start today, July 23, under a bubble-style set up. Nations will compete in a country placed under a public health emergency, now with a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 threatening to make the Olympics a super-spreader of a disaster.

And the worst thing to happen for this year’s Olympians, from whichever country (and what more if the athlete is in the brink of winning a gold medal), is infection and immediate disqualification from competition.

Perhaps no amount of diligent public health protocols — face masking (or face shielding), physical distancing, daily testing and contact tracing — by organizers will dissuade the pesky, slick coronavirus from spoiling the Olympic party. Athletes will just rely on their physical strength, their vaccines, and their immunity to compete under the radar of SARS-CoV-2.

Those athletes include Filipinos, whose 19-athlete delegation to Tokyo is regarded by sports officials as among the most credentialed in recent memory. This current batch of Filipino Olympians wants to snatch as many medals, either similar or more than the three bronze medals hauled at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics (in swimming, athletics and boxing).

World’s top eight best medal bets from Philippines

But what the Philippines has long been craving for is a historic first gold medal. Six athletes — gymnast Carlos Edriel Yulo, 2016 Olympics weightlifting silver medalist Hidilyn Diaz, golfer Yuka Saso, boxers Nesthy Petecio and Eumir Felix Marcial, and pole vaulter Ernest John Obiena — are within the top eight in their sporting disciplines prior to the Games.

Yulo comes to Tokyo as the reigning men’s floor exercises world champion; Diaz is the second-ranked lifter in the women’s 55 kg. class during the Olympic qualification.

For amateur boxing, Petecio is the reigning women’s featherweight world champion and Marcial a middleweight silver medalist at the 2019 world championships.

Saso rides in the crest of winning a major tournament in the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA): the US Women’s Open last June. She’s currently ranked second in the LPGA Tour’s money rankings even if she had only played in three LPGA tournaments this season.

Obiena’s medal finishes in tune-up athletics meets prior to the Tokyo Games have made him the world’s sixth-best pole vaulter.

Multiple medals in previous Olympiads

The Philippines won three medals in 1932 courtesy of Teofilo Yldefonso (200m breaststroke in swimming), Simeon Toribio (men’s high jump in athletics) and Jose “Cely” Villanueva (men’s bantamweight class in boxing).

The country actually won three medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, led by light-flyweight boxer Roel Velasco’s bronze medal. But the bronze medals of taekwondo jins Stephen Fernandez (men’s bantamweight) and former gymnast Beatriz Lucero-Lhuillier (women’s featherweight) did not count in the official tally because taekwondo was then a demonstration sport.

An unofficial gold medal came at the 1988 Seoul Olympics when Arianne Cerdeña-Valdez won the women’s bowling event, also at that time a demonstration sport. Light-flyweight boxer Leopoldo Serantes ended the Philippines’ 24-year medal drought with a bronze medal in Seoul.

Before Hidilyn Diaz’s silver finish at Rio in 2016, light-flyweight boxer Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco won the country’s second silver medal at the 1996 Games in Atlanta. (The first silver came from Cely Villanueva’s son Anthony, at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.)

For a country seeking emotional relief from the stresses of COVID-19, this modern-day Filipino sporting generation competing in Tokyo seeks to quench the homeland’s thirst for that first Olympic gold medal — or smile at multiple Olympic medals regardless of color.

The Filipino Connection is a regional partner of Philstar.com.