A PICTURE that needs no caption\u2014Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Abraham \u201cBambol\u201d Tolentino consoling in his arms the country\u2019s first Olympic gold medalist, Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re still the queen,\u201d Tolentino tells Diaz-Naranjo who only minutes before saw her name outside the magic 10 who qualified for the weightlifting competitions at the Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou are still our champion, you deserve all the honor and respect for giving our country its first gold medal,\u201d Tolentino kept telling Diaz-Naranjo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three years ago at the pandemic delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Diaz\u2014she wasn\u2019t married yet to coach and trainer Julius Naranjo\u2014hugged Tolentino in extremen delight, in tears of joy after it sunk into her that she won the country\u2019s first Olympic gold medal inside the Tokyo International Forum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday night in Phuket, Diaz-Naranjo, competing in a weight division three kilos heavier that -56 kgs where she won gold in Tokyo, wound up 11th<\/sup> in the International Weightlifting Federation World Cup, the last qualifier for Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t unexpected though, Diaz-Naranjo missing a fifth-straight Olympics and another shot at the gold because -59 kgs wasn\u2019t fit to her physique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2019I\u2019m sorry, Cong, I\u2019m sorry \u2026 ,\u201d she repeatedly told me,\u201d said Tolentino, who as the national sports association head for cycling when Diaz-Naranjo made her Olympic debut as a 17-year in Beijing 2008, never ceased to follow the Zamboanga City pride\u2019s rise to glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to say sorry, again, anak,<\/em> you\u2019re still the queen, a legend,\u201d Tolentino told Diaz-Naranjo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A PICTURE that needs no caption\u2014Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Abraham \u201cBambol\u201d Tolentino consoling in his arms the country\u2019s first Olympic gold medalist, Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo. \u201cYou\u2019re still the queen,\u201d Tolentino tells Diaz-Naranjo who only minutes before saw her name outside the magic 10 who qualified for the weightlifting competitions at the Paris Olympics. \u201cYou are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[77,94],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-bambol-tolentino","tag-hidilyn-diaz"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":992,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions\/992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}