Tabal, PH team’s golden girl
from Cebu.
Even more ecstatic were the persons behind Tabal even longer than Fernandez has been: her coach John Philip Dueñas and businessman Jonel Borromeo, her chief financial backer.
The diminutive Tabal—running around in the stadium with the Philippine flag draped around her shoulders, soaking in the adulation of her happy contingent—was a sight to behold. It was her first international marathon gold, and it couldn’t have been sweeter. (Two years back, at the same Games, she had come in with the silver.)
None of this natural high, however, could have happened if there had been no give-and-take between, on one hand, Tabal and her Cebu handlers, and, on the other, the track and field association headed by Philip Juico.
Tabal, 28, had been a thorn on Juico’s side, an athlete who often and completely defied the athletics chief ’s authority.
Juico had always wanted her to submit to the association’s rules—the chief one being that PATAFA’s coaches have full control over her, solely programming her training, and even determining where she competes, here and abroad.
Tabal balked. She argued that she had her own team from Cebu, where she was born and raised, and that these consisted of coaches, trainers, nutritionists and, vital in any competitive sport, financial backers. At 5-foot-1, and lean at barely 110 lbs., she had more spine than most athletes in the national squad.
The people who had backed her up for years, she said, are the people she would follow. She said this is the team that made her what she is: the country’s uncontested best female marathoner in the last four years, winning the country’s premier running event, the Milo Marathon, every year since 2013; and the only Filipina athlete to compete in any Olympic marathon, and now on record as the first Filipina athlete to complete one, the Rio Games in 2016.
Juico and his PATAFA were just as stubborn. They didn’t want any rebel athlete within the organization, and they threatened to bar her from ever competing abroad under the Philippine flag, including the now-ongoing SEA Games.
Negotiations between Tabal’s Cebu team and Juico’s team followed, and in the end, PATAFA allowed Tabal to join the Philippine track and field team. Whether their differences have been ironed out or not is unclear, but Tabal got to go—and grabbed that gold.
Now, chances are brighter that Tabal will be left by track authorities to exercise her independence, that she will be given full financial backing by the PATAFA and the Philippine Sports Commission, and that she will proceed with her unrestricted and intensive training leading toward the Asian Games next year and the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
After all, who can argue with a performance that brings the Philippines its first and, thus far, its only gold?
A sign that their differences may now be a thing of the past is that, when Tabal crossed the finish line, the first to meet, hug, and congratulate her was Juico.
Indeed, nothing like a gold medal to heal old wounds.