Olympic gold medallist ‘engaged’
MANILA: Hidilyn Diaz, the Filipina weighlifting star who won the country’s first ever gold medal in the recent Tokyo Olympics, is proudly sporting another gold, this time, a gold ring to mark her engagement to her boyfriend and weightlifting coach.
In her Instagram post on Saturday, Diaz called it a “magic moment” when Julius Naranjo gifted her with the gold ring immediately after she answered “Yes” to his proposal that they get married.
Diaz, who wore a pink dress, revealed that during their dinner date on Friday night at the posh Resorts World Hotel in Metro Manila, Naranjo went down on one knee and proposed to her.
“It was a magical moment with ( Julius),” she said in her Instagram. “I’m grateful to God that he sent Julius into my life; he made my life easy.”
Diaz said she met Naranjo, a FilipinoJapanese weightlifter when she represented the Philippines at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in Ashgatat, Turkmenistan in 2017.
Naranjo said he represented Guam in the 62kg weightfling category.
Naranjo said he was immediately drawn to Diaz though he was not aware that she was a popular athlete among the Filipinos for the weightlifting gold medals and other honours she had brought home from international competitions.
“When I watched her first at the Turkmenistan tournament, I was inspired to see her willpower and determination,” he said in an interview. “She was working very hard and I found this inspiring.”
Since that first meeting, Naranjo said went on to become Diaz’s strength and conditioning coach, including her stay in Malaysia where she was forced to train for the Tokyo Olympics in July when she could not return to the country due to travel restrictions arising from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Aside from winning gold medals in in the 55kg category, Diaz showed a portent of better things to come when she bagged the sliver medal at the Olympics hosted by Brazil in its capital city of Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
This came about four years later when Diaz won the country’s first ever gold medal since the Philippines started participating in the Olympics less than a 100 years ago.
In the Tokyo Olympics in July, she bested eight other rivals in the 55kg category.
They included world record holder Liao Quiyun of China whom she bested when Diaz lifted an Olympic record of 224kg.
Diaz returned to the Philippines, along with members of the male and female boxing teams where they earned silver and bronze medals, to a hero’s welcome as well as received prizes in cash and in kind like late model cars and free housing and condo units.
Not bad, indeed, for Diaz who left her hometown of Zamboanga City in Mindanao, and join the Philippine Air Force so she could pursue her dream as an athlete to represent the country and bag its first-ever Olympic gold medal.