OLYMPIC champion Hidilyn Diaz won’t compete in next month’s weightlifting world championships in Tashkent citing her lack of preparation.
“I only trained for one week and even weeks of preparation won’t be enough,” Diaz told BusinessMirror over the phone from Malacca, Malaysia, on Tuesday. “The soreness is there…sad to say that we cannot go on.”
Diaz won the country’s first Olympic gold medal in Tokyo last July, ruling—and setting two Games records—the women’s 55-kg category.
The historic win gifted Diaz millions in cash and material incentives and numerous commercial endorsements and television appearances that kept her out of serious gym work for almost three months.
She and husband-to-be Julius Naranjo, who’s also her head trainer and conditioning coach, returned to Malacca to train for the world championships set December 7 to 17 at the Uzbekistan capital, hoping to get to the form that molded her for the Olympic gold medal.
But the window wasn’t enough for the 30-year-old pride of Barangay Mampang in Zamboanga City.
“Everybody knows that I was very busy after winning the gold in the Olympics,” she said. “It’s really not enough and I already set the bar high.”
Diaz added: “I cannot compete for the sake of ‘happiness,’ but also for excellence. I always put everything at a high standard because I represent our country.”
Diaz also said that she’s preoccupied with completing her Business Administration course at the College of Saint Benilde.
“It’s crazy, I’m headed to our thesis and I have four of five terms left before graduation,” said Diaz, who informed the Samahang Weighlifting ng Pilipinas of her decision to withdraw from the Worlds last Friday. “It’s hard.”
The worlds is the only gold medal missing in Diaz’s collection. Next year, she said the Worlds and the Hanoi 31st Southeast Asian Games in May and Huangzhou 19th Asian Games in September are tops on her list.
“We’ll be back in Manila later this month and then come back here early next year to prepare for the SEA Games and Asian Games,” she said. “We want to win both…and training is really important.”