Our First Gold Medal
Today is a historic day as the Philippines has finally won its first Gold medal in the Olympics. The country has Hidilyn Diaz to thank for giving this honor to the country, for winning the Gold medal in the Women's 55 KG weightlifting event. She beat the competitors from China who happen to be holding the world record for this event. It's worth remembering that this is the 4th Olympics of Hidilyn, as she has competed in Beijing, London, Rio and now in Tokyo.
I was lucky that Vinny provided me with a link to watch the event streaming via the internet. It was interesting to see the flow of comments from the other viewers (mostly Filipinos it seemed) as we watched the event together. It was quite nerve wracking as China kept on upping the ante in terms of weights lifted and Hidilyn had to respond and keep on lifting heavier weights without error. She lifted everything she had set out for flawlessly. Brilliant performance and one that is making us all proud.
In her final lift, before she even formally completed, you could see her face breakout in the ugly cry of joy, because she knew that she had was going to win Gold and was going to bring this home to her countrymen. I enjoyed quite a lot her self-talk during her lifts, and could during the medal ceremony could read her lips where she said: Laban Pilipinas!
It was a great way to end the day and give us all this morale boost because earlier in the day some of us had to endure the usual terrible SONA from our president. May 2022 shiner brighter for us all, as we then get elect someone else hopefully without the last name beginning with the letter D.