Beijing Olympics: Last Day and Recap for Team Philippines

It’s hot in Beijing during the last day of the Olympics. Only a few matches left most notably the men’s basketball finals between the US “Redeem Team” and Spain. The US team won 118-107 with Dwyane Wade scoring 27 points. They’ve redeemed themselves after placing third in the Athens Game.

In the demonstration sport of Wushu, Team Philippines picked up 1 silver and 2 bronze medal in the last day. Mary Jane Estimar picked up a silver medal in the Women’s 52kg Sanshou category. Mariane Mariano and Benjie Rivera picked up a bronze medal each in their respective categories in Sanshou. Just like my brother said, hearing the Philippine national anthem played in the games is enough. Let’s hope that they will continue with this sport till it becomes a regular sport in the future games.

That’s the end of Team Philippines’ journey in the Beijing Olympics. We ended with no golds but we went home with rich experience and determination to improve ourselves to do better in London 2012. Till the next Olympics.. hopefully, I’ll get a chance to work in London.

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Beijing Olympics: Day 14 for Team Philippines

It’s a hot and sunny day in Beijing and Team Philippines will end their Olympic stint today with two Pinoys seeing action in taekwondo and diving. Mary Antoinette Rivero touted as the one who has the greatest chance to win the gold will start her fight in the mat at 10am. The other Pinoy, Ryan Rexel Fabrega, will be attempting to reach the semifinals tonight at 7pm in the 10m platform diving.

Ten am rolled and the match between Mary Antoinette Rivero and Sandra Saric started. At the end of round 1, both athletes didn’t score a point. In round 2, Toni scored a defensive kick for 1 point while Sandra scored an offensive kick of 1 point but was given a warning penalty. In round 3, Sandra was able to score 3 defensive kicks to win the match 4 to 1.

Just like Tshomlee, the chance to reach repechage stage was dashed when the eventual champion Hwang Kyungseon of Korea defeated Sandra in the quarterfinals.

Beijing Olympics: Day 8-10 for Team Philippines

Sorry for the delay in updates. It’s either I’m catching up on sleep or I’m stuck at the Nest with no access. You might wonder how come my update is for day 8-10 right? Well.. Team Philippines is taking a rest in Day 9 & 10 so I just bundle it up into one.

Day 8 in Beijing saw the 2nd blue sky day. I had to come in early as I will watch the boxing matches in the evening. I’m a bit sad to have missed Henry Dagmil’s long jump preliminaries last night.

Henry Dagmil’s entry to long jump was not by qualifying any of the matches but as a requirement made by the IAAF. They required us to send two athletes which we did and both for long jump. Henry entered the event with a personal best of 7.99m. He placed 34th in a field of 38 and missed his best by 0.41m.  He achieved 7.58m in his first jump and fouled the next two jumps.

Team Philippines will be back on Tuesday with long jumper Marestella Torres jumping into action at 9:40am. I’ll take my morning break in time to see her jump and hopefully can get some good shots to post here.

Beijing Olympics: Team Philippines in Day 6

Day 6 in Beijing and the weather is as usual gray with heavy downpour early to mid-afternoon. It’s a slow day for Team Philippines as only Daniel Coakley was seen in action. Daniel is the great-grandson of two-time Olympic bronze medalist Teofilo Yldefonso who competed in the 1928 and 1932 Olympic Games.

Daniel Coakley competed in Heat #9 with a start time of 22.80 seconds. He placed 6th out of 8 swimmers clocking in 22.69 seconds. In a field of 97, he placed 39.

Tomorrow, there would be 3 athletes from Team Philippines competing namely Christel Simms (50m freestyle), Ryan Arabejo (1500m freestyle) and Shiela Mae Perez (3m springboard). Also, check out my backstage pictures during the Opening Ceremonies through this link.

Beijing Olympics: Philippines Athletes’ Schedules

On my previous blog, I’ve posted the schedule for Harry Tanamor of Boxing. On this one, I’ll give you a recap of the athletes who’ve already competed and their outcome then the remaining athletes’ schedules.

In Day 3 of the Beijing Olympics, four of our athletes have already competed. Three of them bombed out while the other one has to compete on the knockout stages. Eric Ang of Trap Shooting competed in Day 1 & 2 ended up dead last in a field of 35. First-timer Hidilyn Diaz competed today in weightlifting under 58kg category and placed 11 out of 12 athletes. She was able to lift 85 kg in the snatch and 107 in the clean & jerk category.

James Walsh competed this evening in heat #2 of the 200m butterfly and finished first in his heats clocking 1:59.39. This time wasn’t enough to move on to the semifinal round. Mark Javier of Archery competed in Day 1 for the preliminaries and got an aggregate score of 654 to placed 36 in a field of 64. He will move on to the knockout stage against Kuo Cheng Wei of Chinese-Taipei on August 13, 3:30pm.