LAOAG CITY — Weightlifting makes a giant leap — and lift — to hoisting national awareness and hopefully global excellence down the stretch in a grand return to the 2025 Palarong Pambansa here, four years after delivering the country’s breakthrough Olympic gold medal.
The booming sport, last included in the Palaro during the 80s, found its way back home to join almost 30 events to be played across 40 venues around Ilocos Norte for a glimmer of hope to replicate the momentous feat by Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo in the Tokyo Olympics.
Over 1,700 medals are up for grabs among a 15,000-strong delegation from 18 regions led by 17-time champion National Capital Region starting with first three events of 3,000-meter run, long jump and javelin throw at 6 a.m. at the Ferdinand E. Marcos Memorial Stadium track oval.
Either of the three premier athletic events will deliver the coveted first gold of the 65th Palaro edition serving as only the second hosting since 1968 for Ilocos Norte, the home province of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. from Batac City and the first Filipino Olympic medalist (bronze) Teofilo Yldefonso from the town of Piddig.
President Marcos led the opening ceremony on Saturday night while the Ilocano Shark Mr. Yldefonso is the silhouette on the official Palaro logo as a tribute to his incomparable legacy as an Olympian and war hero.
All other events will also start in different venues around the province dubbed as the “Renewable Energy Capital of Southeast Asia” owing to its wind farms with eyes on the medal-rich events like swimming, gymnastics, arnis and archery, where most of the bemedaled athletes rise.
But the spotlight, now more than ever, will also be shone brighter on weightlifting with no better — and also world’s best — luminary to advance the untapped discipline than the trailblazer Ms. Diaz herself.
Ms. Diaz, who’s also preparing for another shot at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, serve as the tournament director in a noble, larger-than-life dream of unearthing the Filipinos’ limitless potential of weightlifting and other sports as well.
Save for this time, the dream is closer to reality — which she first shed light on by bringing home the gold in the Land of the Rising Sun to snap a long and winding hunt by a multitude of Filipino athletes for the first Olympic glory in almost a century.
With five divisions each for boys and girls’ secondary, weightlifting will serve as a demo sport for now — along with other debuting exhibition sports like futsal and kickboxing — but what’s important for Ms. Diaz is finally having an annual platform like Palaro that she never had back when she was just a dreamer.
The international competition — and success like she had from scratch without any grassroots competition — can then wait after making the best out of here.
“I can see the Philippine weightlifting having more participants and quality athletes in Batang Pinoy and Palaro for, of course, an Olympic gold soon. We want to go down to the regions to teach.”
Meanwhile, the advance games of team sports football, baseball and softball as well as boxing already got going on Saturday followed by the Palaro ng Lahi (Kadang-Kadang, Patintero and Sack Race) on Sunday to roll the red carpet for country’s premier scholastic sports competition organized by the Department of Education in cooperation with the Philippine Sports Commission, Department of Interior and Local Government and Ilocos Norte led by Gov. Matthew Manotoc. — John Bryan Ulanday
