EIGHT Filipino athletes are competing at the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championships in Bogota all wanting to be like their idol—Olympic champion Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo.
Diaz-Naranjo has a two-word advise to these promising weightlifters—be patient.
“They all have the potentials and the talent to become the best,” Diaz-Naranjo told BusinessMirror on the eve of the start of the world championships in Colombia’s capital on Monday. “All I can advise to my fellow weightlifters is to think long term.”
“Patience is virtue and we still have a year and eight months to qualify [for the Paris 2024 Olympics],” she added.
Never doubt Diaz-Naranjo. Before winning the country’s first Olympic gold medal in Tokyo last year, she had to go on a long journey.
She was an unassuming and innocent-looking 17-year-old in her Olympic debut in Beijing 2008 and disqualified (no lift) in London four years later.
But packed with two Olympic experience and older, wiser and stronger, she clinched silver in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Five years later—it could have been four if not for the pandemic—she struck gold ending the Philippines’s close to 100-year wait for that victory.
“There’s no need to rush or force everything. We need to learn and gain experience,” Diaz-Naranjo, now 31, said. “Remember, it’s the Olympics you’re aiming for.”
Joining Diaz-Naranjo in the world championships set at Bogota’s Gran Carpa Americas Coferias are Rio de Janeiro Olympian Nestor Colonia (55 kgs), John Febuar Ceniza (61 kgs), Dave Lloyd Pacaldo (67 kgs), Asian champion Vanessa Sarno and Kristel Macrohon (71 kgs), Rosegie Ramos and Lovely Inan (49 kgs) and Elreen Ann Ando (59 kgs).
Diaz-Naranjo is seeded No. 2 in the 55 kgs class behind hometown bet Rosalba Estela Morales del Aguila with both submitting entry weights of 210 kgs.
These world championships are the first of six qualifiers for Paris 2024.