Have a minute? Try sitting still and watching the second hand of a clock as it sweeps its way around the dial. Feels like a long time, doesn’t it? Now, picture waiting for something to arrive, not for an hour, not for a day, but for 100 years. An eternity, right?
Now imagine what it must feel like for that century-long wait to finally be over. Awesome and then some, of course, and it’s the very reason Hidilyn Diaz, a 30-year-old weightlifter from the Philippines was over the moon when, with her final dramatic lift of the competition, she won the first-ever gold medal for her homeland after a 100-year Olympic drought.
The Philippines has been sending teams to the Summer Olympics since 1924. Over the course of ensuing competitions, Filipino athletes have historically scored 10 medals, but the gold remained elusive. (Diaz herself won a silver in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games.)
Training throughout the pandemic has been rough, but for Diaz, the challenges she faced were tougher than most.
Stranded by COVID-19 travel restrictions, Diaz was unable to see her family for more than a year. To top that off, she lacked proper training equipment and was forced to improvise—but she persevered.
Coming as she did from an economically challenged childhood, the lessons Diaz learned early in life about self-sufficiency and resilience certainly stood her in good stead during the ordeal she endured leading up to the games.
A Reddit discussion chronicles the many obstacles Diaz had to overcome just to get to Tokyo, and how she repeatedly rose to the occasion.
“The most amazing thing about her story is that she got stuck in Malaysia during the COVID lockdown. She was only there for an Olympic qualifying event when the government banned traveling and she ended up being stuck there for more than a year. I read she had to build her own workout equipment using water jugs,” one Reddit commenter reported.
“And despite all that, [she] and her team were running online seminars at the same time in exchange for donations. They used the funds they raised to help get basic necessities like groceries to people back home in the Philippines who were having trouble during the lockdown,” another enthused.
To win the gold, Diaz needed to take down the 2019 world champion, China’s Liao Qiuyun, who’d earned an impressive overall score of 223 for her three lifts. But Diaz proceeded to set a new world record with a clean and jerk of 127 kg (about 280 lbs), taking her cumulative total to 224 and cinching the top honors in the event.
Realizing what she’d just accomplished, an ecstatic Diaz was overcome with emotion. Tears flowed freely as she took the podium and saluted the Filipino flag while the country’s national anthem played.
“We are so proud to see our motherland’s flag raised at the Olympic podium and we are deeply thankful to Hidilyn Diaz for bringing the first gold medal to the Philippines,” Brendan Flores, president of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations told The Washington Post.
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As proud as her country is of her, for Diaz, the feeling is more than mutual. She sees her win as a “golden opportunity” to inspire other up-and-coming Filipinos to set their sights high, to work hard, and to never give up.
“I am thankful that God is using me to inspire all the young generation and all the Filipino people to keep fighting during this pandemic,” she said in a statement reported by WaPo. “To all the young generation in the Philippines, please dream high… That’s how I started. I dreamed high and finally, I was able to do it.”
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