The kids lined the streets of Manila, waving the Philippine flag and screaming their names. In eight or 12 years, will one of them be at the Olympics too, and say, ‘I was there when Carlos Yulo passed by.’
This week has been a whirlwind of a homecoming for our Filipino Olympians. They were honored at Malacañang Palace, the checks signed, the condo turned over, the confetti released, feted and paraded in the streets of Manila, and a promise to “look for more money if you need it” was made by the President.
Have the lifetime colonoscopy and buffet vouchers been sent over as well? Ahh, how disappointing.
Minus our two golfers who remained in Europe for competitions and the three gymnasts who were not informed of the grand homecoming party, our Olympians have been showered with love and admiration—as they were online when they were in Paris—but this time in person.
The Paris Olympics had so many moments that brought Filipinos to tears, not for any other reason than that this country—always desperate for heroes—suddenly had not one but 22.
The phenomenal two-gold Olympic medalist Carlos Yulo had the additional experience of being told how to run his life by Filipinos as soon as the PAL chartered plane touched down at Villamor Airbase.
He had scarcely taken a breath of Manila air before being reprimanded like a seven-year-old boy by people who didn’t know him. The 24-year-old who has lived alone in Japan to train in gymnastics since he was 16 is clearly the only person in this world who has the right to set his own boundaries and decide how to act with people who have caused him hurt and happiness. But that didn’t stop others from telling him off.
How damaged is our culture that people feel the need to make fake accounts to pick fights online?
Is everybody calm now?
Why was the Paris Olympics so different, why were we all so invested this time around? From the games that many of us stayed up for to the nerve-wracking final scoring, we watched the athletes perform their hearts out on behalf of us all.
The Paris Olympics had so many moments that brought Filipinos to tears, not for any other reason than that this country—always desperate for heroes—suddenly had not one but 22.
Unlike countries represented by hundreds of Olympians (Team USA had 595) and are used to reaping all medal colors in a variety of events (they won 40 gold, 44 silver, and 42 bronze), winning for us is rare. Weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz broke the 20-year drought at the Rio Olympics 2016 by winning a silver medal, a lifetime away from boxer Onyok Velasco’s silver in Atlanta 1996.
And so we put our 2024 athletes on a flatbed truck, the front covered with the colors of the flag and the Olympic rings, and paraded them with pride because they brought home not just the medals around their necks, but the prize of a century: inspiration. Especially to the children who waved little flags and whose hope for a better future was not in college degrees.
They suddenly had another way. They could be the next EJ Obiena or Carlos Yulo, both sons of Manila and products of Palarong Pambansa in their schooldays. A younger EJ used to practice in what was no more than a pit padded with mud; Carlos used to do tumbling with his friends at the CCP grounds. Bronze medalists Nesthy Petecio and Aira Villegas boxed their way to the top from the streets of Davao and Leyte.
Carlos’ gold medals told us that even if you barely reach five feet, you can be the tallest person at the Olympics standing on that gold medal podium—if you worked hard, trained and sacrificed your teenage life like he did. He told our kids that you can have one or two disappointing Olympics, and come back again to perform with such grace that the judges are left without a choice but to score you above the rest.
So they came home after 19 days of eye-popping athletic spectacle in jaw-dropping, historic venues in Paris. From the richest businessmen to the Great Unwashed of our cities—they all wanted to shake their hands and take pictures with them.
One hundred years of fortitude
The Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez liked to punish his characters in his landmark novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by giving them a history that repeated itself through generations. Call it history, call it destiny—but in that town of Macondo, the Buendia family was unable to break free from their inherited flaws and tendencies. They repeated their mistakes over and over and over again.
You can say the Philippines’ sports program has had the same cycle for a century. Meddling politicians and sports federation heads becoming greedy and inept with every generation of athletes that suffer the consequences.
We all know that it is only through the fortitude of our athletes that these Summer Games have become our best ever. Yet, as it has been for a century, we are afraid that the cycle will begin again—they are celebrated today, then underfunded, or their sport is mismanaged until someone switches nationalities, and outrage follows.
If Rio and Tokyo galvanized the country’s determination to do better in Paris—which they did not because of the government, but despite the government—these four years leading to LA2028 should be the last time our sports federations are isolated from common sense.
It should be the last time that an elite golfer like Dottie Ardina would have to tape the flag she represents to her uniform and be told to “just focus on her game.” No other Filipino athlete should be told by a competitor, “Your flag is falling off. Don’t you have a uniform?”
There is no turning back for the Philippines. The years and decades when Filipino athletes would come home emptyhanded from the Olympics are over—especially after Carlos Yulo’s two gold medals.
