win Olympic gold for the Philippines at Tokyo 2020
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The Philippines has never won an Olympic gold medal but Hidilyn Diaz is ready to rip up the history books at Tokyo 2020.
At Rio 2016, Diaz won her country’s first Olympic medal by a woman, taking silver in the -53kg weightlifting final after a dramatic finish.
The Japan Games will be her fourth Olympics in a row and she is out to perform weightlifting alchemy by converting that silver into Tokyo 2020 gold.
But real Olympic magic is made of talent, hard work, sacrifice, and dedication, and it’s been a rocky road to Tokyo for the Philippine star.
In June 2019 the weightlifter went public with a plea for financial support, and life right now is train, eat, compete, repeat.
She refuses to quit.
Now competing at 55kg, her first gold medal in the Southeast Asian Games came in December 2019 in front of an adoring home crowd, and expectation for Tokyo is grew louder again when she won three gold medals at the Weightlifting World Cup event in Rome, Italy, at the end of January 2020.
The girl from Mindanao, born to a family of six siblings, may deliver one of Tokyo’s most memorable tales.
Hidilyn Diaz on golden Tokyo 2020 mission: “I need financial support.”
“Fight for your dreams”
Born the fifth of six children in Mampang village near Zamboanga city on the Mindanao peninsula in southern Philippines, becoming Olympic champion seemed a distant dream.
While still at school Hidilyn would go with her father Eduardo on his tricycle to help sell vegetables and fish on the street or at the local market.
Many nights rice mixed with soy sauce was all the family had to eat.
Sport wasn’t just a pastime for a young Hidilyn Diaz, it was a path to a better life.
As a young girl she wanted to work in a bank to help her mother with money worries.
“We were poor back then,” she told ESPN5 Philippines in December 2019.
“When I was a kid, I told her I wanted to work in a bank and count money. Then eventually get married and raise a kid. The thought of winning in the Olympics never entered my mind.”
Introduced to weightlifting by her cousin, Catalino Diaz Jr, the little girl who would become a national icon started lifting weights made from plastic pipes and homemade concrete weights cast in old tin cans.
When she was 11, the Filipina was given a barbell to train with after a local weightlifting competition, and she practised so hard that she wore it out, breaking the bar from overuse.
But people and clubs noticed her dedication and donated more bars to the girl who loved to lift as she became a frequent fixture at every competition she could enter.
Soon passion became vocation and Diaz found the only person to have ever competed in weightlifting for the Philippines to guide her: Ramon Solis.
He became the first ever Filipino weightlifter at Seoul 1988.
“Challenges are just part of life. Time will come when you just want to give up but you need to fight for your dreams.” – Hidilyn Diaz on daytime TV show ASAP
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Read More: win Olympic gold for the Philippines at Tokyo 2020 2023-06-27 07:00:00