HIDILYN DIAZ begged off from being interviewed on Thursday afternoon, a rarity between the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics weightlifting silver medalist and the BusinessMirror.
It was OK. After all, Diaz—still embedded in Jasin in Malacca, Malaysia, training for the Tokyo Olympics—was deep into a battery of online examinations from her professors at the College of Saint Benilde in Manila.
“I’m very sorry, but I have my examinations now,” Diaz politely replied to BusinessMirror’s message. “Perhaps later today or tomorrow.”
Diaz, a gold medalist in both the Jakarta 2018 Asian Games and Philippines 2019 Southeast Asian Games, has two more years before securing a degree in Business Management at Saint Benilde, which offered the pride of Zamboanga City a scholarship as one of her rewards after Rio.
According to the 30-year-old Diaz’s strength and conditioning Coach Julius Irvin Naranjo, Diaz’s examinations on Labor Law covered Termination, Discipline and Dismissal of Workers.
Diaz’s work ethic first as an athlete and a student are enviable, to think that after three consecutive Olympics and the millions of cash incentives she has banked for her victories on the international stage, she still treasures a college degree.
“She’s studious and focused on her studies as she is about her sport,” Naranjo said.
Diaz and her team will be flying to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for the the Asian Weightlifting Championships, her sixth and last International Weightlifting Federation Olympic qualifying competition that would formally seal her ticket to Tokyo.
All Diaz has to do is to show up in Tashkent, walk to the competition platform and merely participate in the April 15 to 25 event. No need to catch a particular weight, not even the podium.
“We’ll fly to Tashkent perhaps on April 10 to acclimatize and we would be coming back here [Malaysia] on April 23, right after Hidilyn completes her event,” Naranjo said.
Diaz, Naranjo and Chinese coach Kaiwan Gao have been training in Malacca for the past 13 months now. They haven’t returned to the Philippines since.
Except Sundays which are absolute rest days, Diaz attends online classes everyday on top of eight to nine training sessions a week and once-a-week physiotherapy.
If everything goes as scheduled in Tashkent, Diaz will be the country’s Olympics qualifier after boxers Eumir Felix Marcial and Irish Magno, pole vaulter EJ Obiena and world champion gymnast Carlos Yulo.
“Hidilyn’s doing well, injury free, but we are doing training very safely,” said Naranjo, a former weightlifter who represented Guam in international competitions from 2014 to 2018. “We are adjusting to the circumstances and implement new things for her body to continuously progress.”
The Tokyo Olympics are set from July 23 to August 8.
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