The Tokyo 2020 games end today, Sunday, Aug. 8, 2021, with the country celebrating the stunning performance of Filipino athletes.
Four medals. A first in Olympic history for the Philippines. Team Philippines has medalists Hidilyn Diaz for gold (weightlifting), Nesthy Petecio for silver (boxing), Carlo Paalam also for silver (boxing) and Eumir Marcial for bronze (boxing). Other Filipino athletes did their best, came close to getting a medal and equally made the country proud.
What all these mean is that we should continue to support our national athletes, encourage them to join other international competitions and for the government to prioritize sports and finance athlete training.
Diaz raised in 2019 the point about needing government support for Olympic hopefuls in the Tokyo games and that earned her a place in the list of persons against the government. Other athletes said almost the same thing about needing more government support for training and for helping them support their families while they trained. One pointed to how athletes in other countries are supported by their governments through funding for their training and by providing income and scholarships for their families. Players cannot hold a regular job or stay in school even if they wanted to because they have to set aside time to train if they wanted to fulfill their Olympic dreams.
The meaning of these Olympic medals is that we should give sports the importance it deserves.
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Trolls lost in Olympics.
An Associated Press report last week described the Olympic Games as extraordinary “where mental health has been front and center” and “acts of kindness” were everywhere. It cited instances such as when a surfer who was defeated jumped in to translate for the rival who won, two high-jump contenders agreed to share a gold medal rather than hold a tiebreaker and two runners who fell on each other got up to help each other to the finish line.
What also won in the games was goodwill over abusive behavior on cyberspace. In the case of the surfer, Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi helped out Brazilian Italo Ferreira despite being targeted by racist Brazilian trolls. We know how trolls can be threatening and hurtful as we have plenty of them in the Philippines, but we can only imagine how Igarashi must have felt at the height of the contest. The trolls lost as camaraderie among competitors won.
Then there was Filipino gold medalist Diaz who not only won over rivals in the women’s 55kg weightlifting event but also over trolls who threatened and bullied her when she was included in a 2019 list of people out to overthrow the Duterte government. She was not part of any political plot, she simply had aired her sentiment about the lack of government support for athletes.
This Olympics would be known for many breakthroughs and these include openness to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) athletes and victory over trolls.