IT WAS another weekend that put Philippine sports in world spotlight.
First, our national men’s volleyball team made history by scoring its first win in the World Volleyball championship on home soil.
Second, EJ Obiena, our two-time pole vault Olympian in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2024 Paris Olympics, scored a historic win in the World Pole Vault Challenge, also in Manila.
The twin feats underscored anew the Filipinos’ continuing climb to unprecedented heights on the global scene, sparked mainly by the Olympic gold-medal feats of weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz in Tokyo and gymnast Carlos Yulo in Paris.
Diaz’s win ended nearly a century of gold-medal drought for the Philippines since it began its Olympic journey in 1924, also in Paris, making our country the first Southeast Asian nation to see action in the quadrennial meet and sending track and field specialist David Nepomuceno as the sole Filipino participant.
What made it sweeter and doubly inspiring was Yulo’s Paris haul of not just one gold but two gold medals, which was truly spectacular, to say the least, considering that every Olympic competition is always at its highest level.
And the Filipino fire for world honors would so rapturously be amplified when Alex Eala scored her own historic strides in world women’s tennis.
Just recently, Eala, just 20 and a rookie pro, would first defeat three former Grand Slam champions in succession in the Miami Open, advance to the finals of the Lexus Eastbourne Open in England, become the first Filipino — male or female — to pocket a first Grand Slam match in the last U.S. Open and cap her spirited run with a stunning victory in the Guadalajara Open in Mexico.
She did it all in a maze of dizzying weeks of country-hopping jousts, can you believe that?
And now this, our men’s volleyball team defeating 11-time African champion Egypt in four sets in a win that was as unbelievable as when man first set foot on the moon.
You think that’s all?
We should have beaten Asian Games champion Iran but for a winning block by Kim Malabunga in the fifth and deciding set that was — of all rulings — ruled a net touch after an Iran challenge.
Yes, we missed entering the quarterfinals but not the adoration of a crowd that packed the MOA Arena in Pasay City.
Obiena would next serve as a balm, beating six of the world’s top vaulters in winning at Ayala Complex in Makati, on Sunday, before also an adoring crowd.
I couldn’t ask for more.
