AGE: 27 years old
SPORT: Women’s long jump
OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE: 1st-time Olympian
MEDALS: Two-gold winner, Southeast Asian Games 2007 and ’05 Two-time winner, Asian Grand Prix 2005
MARISTELLA TORRES officially got her ticket to the Beijing Olympics barely two months before the Games would open on August 8.
Going to her first trip to the world’s biggest stage, she surely didn’t mind the wait.
“You’ll be competing against the best in the world. All I can promise is, I will do my best. This is not for any personal goals anymore. This is for the country,” Torres said.
Torres is the latest torchbearer in a relatively long line of women long-jumpers who have done the country proud in international tournaments in the last 25 years.
Elma Muros-Posadas was the Philippine representative in the 1984 and later in the 1996 Olympics. Lerma Bulauitan-Gabito wore the tricolors in the 2004 Olympics.
And then Torres who assumed the throne not only as the best RP women’s long-jumper but also arguably as the reigning queen of Philippine athletics.
She formally took over “the reins” in 2005 when she and Bulauitan-Gabito competed in the Manila Southeast Asian Games. Bulauitan-Gabito was ready to take another long-jump gold medal after she posted a good-enough distance on her second attempt. Going for broke, Torres erased Bulauitan-Gabito’s mark on her final jump to claim her first SEA Games long-jump gold.
Later in the 2007 Thailand SEA Games, Torres ably defended her event and proved once again that she wasn’t just the Philippines’ best anymore but all of Southeast Asia as well.
“People who’ve been in the athletics community saw my potential and I think I’ve left an impression that was enough for them to say to me that I’m worth investing time and hard work on,” Torres said.
“We drew up all these plans and all these goals and I’m blessed to have be able to accomplish them and I hope I’m not letting down the people who trust me to meet their expectations,” she added.
Torres’s trip to the China Olympiad couldn’t be more poetic; she picked up her jumping skills playing the Chinese garter as an elementary student in Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental province.
To get to where she is now, Torres had to go through every competitive level—from the national youth games to college varsity at the Far Eastern University.
Besides her SEA Games exploits, Torres has trotted virtually every event in the Eastern hemisphere. She participated in the Asian Games in 2002 (in Korea) and in 2006 (in Qatar).
She won the silver in the 2005 Asian Athletics Championships in Korea and a two-leg gold medalist in the Asian Grand Prix of the same year.
SPORT: Women’s long jump
OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE: 1st-time Olympian
MEDALS: Two-gold winner, Southeast Asian Games 2007 and ’05 Two-time winner, Asian Grand Prix 2005
MARISTELLA TORRES officially got her ticket to the Beijing Olympics barely two months before the Games would open on August 8.
Going to her first trip to the world’s biggest stage, she surely didn’t mind the wait.
“You’ll be competing against the best in the world. All I can promise is, I will do my best. This is not for any personal goals anymore. This is for the country,” Torres said.
Torres is the latest torchbearer in a relatively long line of women long-jumpers who have done the country proud in international tournaments in the last 25 years.
Elma Muros-Posadas was the Philippine representative in the 1984 and later in the 1996 Olympics. Lerma Bulauitan-Gabito wore the tricolors in the 2004 Olympics.
And then Torres who assumed the throne not only as the best RP women’s long-jumper but also arguably as the reigning queen of Philippine athletics.
She formally took over “the reins” in 2005 when she and Bulauitan-Gabito competed in the Manila Southeast Asian Games. Bulauitan-Gabito was ready to take another long-jump gold medal after she posted a good-enough distance on her second attempt. Going for broke, Torres erased Bulauitan-Gabito’s mark on her final jump to claim her first SEA Games long-jump gold.
Later in the 2007 Thailand SEA Games, Torres ably defended her event and proved once again that she wasn’t just the Philippines’ best anymore but all of Southeast Asia as well.
“People who’ve been in the athletics community saw my potential and I think I’ve left an impression that was enough for them to say to me that I’m worth investing time and hard work on,” Torres said.
“We drew up all these plans and all these goals and I’m blessed to have be able to accomplish them and I hope I’m not letting down the people who trust me to meet their expectations,” she added.
Torres’s trip to the China Olympiad couldn’t be more poetic; she picked up her jumping skills playing the Chinese garter as an elementary student in Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental province.
To get to where she is now, Torres had to go through every competitive level—from the national youth games to college varsity at the Far Eastern University.
Besides her SEA Games exploits, Torres has trotted virtually every event in the Eastern hemisphere. She participated in the Asian Games in 2002 (in Korea) and in 2006 (in Qatar).
She won the silver in the 2005 Asian Athletics Championships in Korea and a two-leg gold medalist in the Asian Grand Prix of the same year.
In three Asian Grand Prix stops just last June, Torres finished progressively from fourth (in Bangkok), to third (in Korat, Thailand) to second (in Hanoi).
The International Association of Athletics Federations mandates every national federation to choose two athletes who it thinks deserves a slot in Olympics.
Without batting an eyelash, the Philippine Amateur Track and Field Association picked out Torres who was fresh under an intense training under a renowned American track coach for two months in the US that ended in the last week of May.
“My first goal is to get to the finals [in the Olympics], and then let’s see what happens next,” Torres said.
“I’m slowly getting into form for Beijing. The whole US training was difficult at first but there’s no doubt I was able to get my maximum performance there. I think I’m better now than I was in the [2007] SEA Games.”
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