Luck be a lady
Some times, a perfect confluence of events — the opposite of a perfect storm — descends on an individual, making her both blessed and lucky.
Olympic silver medalist Hi di lyn
Diaz, 25, put herself through the gauntlet and underwent brutal training to prepare for the 2016 Rio Olympics — a minimum of two to three hours a day, six days a week, only setting aside Sundays, Christmas and New Year to rest.
She told People-Asia magazine that her palms became raw, her bones and muscles ached. But she was determined to leave a mark in Philippine sports, and by lifting those weights of steel, to lift the honor of her country as well.
After all, it had been two decades since a Filipino brought home an Olympic silver (the last Filipino Olympic silver medalist was boxer Onyok Velasco). And no Filipina has ever won a silver, ever. The pressure to uplift the country’s reputation weighed heavily on the 4-ft.-10.5-inch Zamboangueña.
“I remember going up on stage for my first attempt. I felt anxious and worried, but once my feet touched the platform, my mind went clear and it became silent. In my head, I said to myself: ‘ Nandito ka na. Ready ka na. Kaya
mo yan’ ( You’re already here. You’re ready. You can do this),” Hidilyn, who is also with the Air Force as Air woman First Class, recalled.
At her best attempt, Hidilyn, a contender in the 53-kg. division, raised 200 kg. of steel iron. It was four times her body weight.
After the applause, which made her confident she made the grade, Hidilyn felt a weight lifted off her shoulders. “It was the most exhilarating feeling in the world.”
And then hard work and elbow grease were replaced by pure luck — the gold medalist was disqualified, moving the silver medalist to gold, and Hidilyn to silver. Hard work, effort, plus good luck created a confluence of blessings for the diminutive heavy weight lifter.
Last Tuesday, Resorts World Manila president and CEO Kingson Sian and People-Asia publisher and CEO Babe Romualdez presented Hidilyn with the first ever Lucky Person of the Year award. Hidilyn’s precious trophy was designed and especially sculpted by former People of the Year awardee Ramon Orlina. And she looked like a true dalagang Filipina in her Jun Escario terno. Asked why Resorts World Manila came up with this award for Hidilyn, Kingson said, “The Lucky Person of the Year Award was created to celebrate individuals who had the audacity, the vision, and the determination to work hard to seize opportunities and overcome obstacles to reach their goals, change their lives, and become, as people would say, ‘ swerte’.”
Since competing at age 11, Hidilyn has won — and lost — numerous times. But among those victories include two silver and one bronze medal from the Southeast Asian Games won in 2007, 2011 and 2013; a gold medal from the 2015 Asian Weightlifting Championships; and a bronze from the 2015 World Weightlifting Championships. She had also joined the Olympics three times, the first being in the 2008 Beijing Olympics at 17.
So it really wasn’t pure luck for the hardworking Hidilyn. She trained for this.
Kingson agrees. “People may experience random good luck for a time, but true success and lasting luck are achieved by those who take the initiative to seize opportunities, strive relentlessly to reach their goals, and work to maintain or grow their achievements. The secret to good fortune is opening a world of opportunities through hard work and undaunted perseverance.”
What made Resorts World Manila choose Hidilyn Diaz as the first Lucky Person of the Year Awardee among all the other personalities who were also considerably lucky in 2016?
“We all saw Hidilyn’s medal- winning moment in the Rio Olympics. We were all moved at how she wept tears of joy upon realizing that she had broken a 20-year medal drought for the country and made history as the first Filipina Olympic medalist. That was an incredibly thrilling moment for the country, and it would have been enough to make her a serious contender for the award, but it was the journey she had to take to make it to that podium — that sealed the deal for us,” answers the debonair Kingson.
Kingson says the Resorts World team was struck by Hidilyn’s “single- minded determination to reach the highest levels of her sport.”
“She knew what she wanted to be at age nine when she lifted that first barbell in her hometown in Zamboanga City. At the time, her mother even tried to discourage her from taking it up, because it was unladylike. Undaunted and too drawn to the thrill of beating even older boys at this ‘unladylike’ activity, she was already competing and winning at age 11.
“Train, compete and win. This was her dream and it became her life. With all the prizes and accolades that her Olympic win got for her, people might be fooled into thinking that she just got lucky. What they don’t see is the tens of thousands of hours of training, the injuries that threaten to derail her career, the ‘fun’ parts of a normal childhood and adolescence that she had to forego, and the pain of defeat.”
Hidilyn related to the Resorts World team “how she cried for two weeks after crashing out of the 2012 London Olympics. She had been chosen as the Philippine flag bearer then, and she was expected to do well, but didn’t deliver. As we all know now, that disappointment didn’t stop her, and she’s come back stronger, and we are all so lucky she did.”
Indeed, indeed. Hidilyn’s good fortune is the nation’s as well.
( You may e-mail me at joanneraeramirez@yahoo.com.)