TWO more athletes—both ladies—made the growing list of Filipino qualifiers for the Tokyo Olympics following the entry of judoka Kiyomi Watanabe and runner Kristina Marie Knott on Wednesday.
Watanabe formally made the female -63 kgs class of judo following the International Judo Federation’s (IJF) announcement of her qualification through continental quota close to midnight on Wednesday.
“The final word came in the middle of the night that Kiyomi [Watanabe] is qualified,” Philippine Judo Federation President Dave Carter told BusinessMirror on Wednesday.
The IJF, Carter said, contacted Philippine Olympic Committee President Rep. Abraham Tolentino to confirm Watanabe’s qualification.
“She is the first Filipina Olympian in judo,” Carter said of the Filipino-Japanese, who owns four consecutive gold medals at the Southeast Asian Games and a silver at the Jakarta 2018 Asian Games.
Knott, on the other hand, made the grade in the women’s 200-meter run of athletics via the universality rule.
The Filipino-American Knott, however, will lose at least 14 days of training time after she contracted the Covid-19 virus. Doctors in the US are determining if it’s of the delta variant strain.
“You have to deserve it, it’s not an automatic thing,” Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association President Philip Ella Juico told a virtual news conference on Wednesday. “She was right there at the middle of it, her rankings were within fairly striking distance of the qualification.”
Tolentino, meanwhile, welcomed the entry of Watanabe and Knott as he underscored gender equity is at its finest for Team Philippines in the July 23 to August 8 Olympics.
“It’s great we have a lot of Filipinas who will compete in Tokyo, and the chances of winning our first-ever Olympic gold medal have increased,” Tolentino told BusinessMirror on Wednesday.
“I salute their overall courage to qualify and compete. It’s women empowerment all the way.”
Of the 15 officially qualified Filipino athletes so far, seven are women—Watanabe, Knott, boxers Irish Magno and Nesthy Petecio, weightlifters Hidilyn Diaz and Elreen Ann Ando and skateboarder Margielyn Didal.
But count Yuka Saso and Bianca Pagdanganan in—both are shoo-ins in women’s golf—and the ladies outnumber the men, 9-8.
The male athletes are pole vaulter Ernest John “EJ” Obiena of athletics, gymnast Carlos Yulo, boxers Eumir Marcial and Carlo Paalam, rower Cris Nievarez, taekwondo’s Kurt Barbosa, shooter Jayson Valdez and golfer Juvic Pagunsan.
Saso and Pagdanganan are expected to be officially announced as Olympic qualifiers by the International Golf Federation on Tuesday.
Eric Cray will try to qualify in the men’s 400m hurdles by competing in a meet in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Sunday.
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