JOHN ENRICO “JOCO” VASQUEZ is a young man on a tough mission in Paris—make Dagupan City proud of having its first Olympian.
Vasquez flew to the French capital at noon on Sunday with his coach Chino Veguillas on board a Singapore Airlines flight. There, he will rendezvous with fellow kata artist Filipino-Japanese Sarah Pangilinan and six other kumite bets who will vie in the Karate Olympic Qualification Tournament.
“I’ll just do my very best. I’ll just do what I learned during my tough training,” Vasquez, 20, told BusinessMirror a few hours before his flight. “I expect myself to be the underdog. I am the smallest participant there, I have to admit.
Vasquez stands a compact 5-foot-1 but in karate’s kata, height isn’t much of a factor—it’s the form that counts.
“Europeans and Westerns are bigger and athletic so they will be more on power, while Asians, small as they are, are more on the athletic side. So I will lean on my speed,” said Vasquez, a junior Accountancy student at San Beda.
The qualifiers are set from June 11 to 13 at the Stade Pierre de Coubertine Sports Hall in Paris
Vasquez clinched bronze in the individual and team kata events at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, thus the Olympics are an enormous stage for him and the Paris qualifiers an extremely crucial task for him to accomplish.
“I’ll fight for my family, for Dagupan City, for Karate Pilipinas and for the country,” said Vasquez, who, like everyone else, had to endure virtual training for more than a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He thanked Dagupan City Mayor Brian Lim for additional funding, the Dagupan City Sports Commission for his anti-Covid-19 vaccine and swab testing, Ken Hadachi (Heiken) and Atty. Delmar Cruz for processing his Schengen visa.
Vasquez trained at his father’s Dojo, Enrico Vasquez Wado Ryu Karate Home Dojo, near their home in Malued District in Dagupan City.
Ranked No. 20 in the World Karate Federation’s male under-21 category, Vasquez, a product of the Mother Goose Special Science High School, could be the first Filipino Olympian from Dagupan City.
Also vying in the qualifiers are kumite bets Junna Tsukii (women’s -50 kgs), Jamie Lim (women’s 68 kgs), Joanne Orbon (women’s 61 kgs), Ivan Agustin (men’s -75 kgs), Sharief Afif (men’s +75 kgs), Jason Macaalay (men’s -67 kgs) and Alwyn Batican (men’s -67 kg).