It’s that time again for the Olympic Games when the world’s athletes come together under one moon for the planet’s big quadrennial athletic hoedown.  Except this time, due to the Covid-19 virus, the big meet is taking place, masked and socially distanced, under the shade of cherry blossoms and the shadow of Mount Fuji.  They are also called the “rearranged” Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.  

But still “Tokyo 2020”? They will be played as such, with a little fudging, to be consistent with the quadrennial Olympic recordkeeping and, primarily, because all the materiel of these Games—the certificates, pins, banners, nearly 5,000 medals, 10,000 torches, etc., all bearing “Tokyo 2020”—were ready a year ago. It would be vastly expensive to redo everything merely to bring it up to date as “Tokyo 2020ne.” Eight years’ prep work and a few billion dollars would go to waste if the Games were completely canceled, Covid pandemic notwithstanding.

The Tokyo 2020 medals: Top row shows the obverse – the traditional design of the goddess of victory, Nike; bottom row, reverse, displays the Tokyo 2020 logo. Almost 5,000 medals (about 3,500 for the Olympics; 1,500 for the Paralympics, plus reserves) have been minted. The gold, silver and bronze content of the medals were “rescued” from more than 20,000 dead cellphones and other electronic devices – in keeping with the “recycling and environmental responsibility” theme. If the Games were totally canceled, all of that effort would just go to waste.

There is also the strong determination to buck a bad luck trend. While the Summer Games in Tokyo in 1964 happened right on schedule, the first Tokyo Olympics was going to be in 1940, but when Imperial Japan invaded Manchukuo in 1938, the honor was rescinded. (Japan has also hosted two Winter Games, at Sapporo 1972 and Nagano 1998.) It’s as if Japan wishes that interruption by the Covid pandemic never happened. It seems better late than never.

The Filipino 2020ne National Team being vaxxed for Tokyo.

Let’s meet the past Filipino Olympic medalists by each Summer Olympic Games they participated in:

PARIS 1924, the Games of “Chariots of Fire” fame.

(Olympic posters c/o the International Olympic Committee)

The Philippines (then marching under the name “Philippine Islands”) made its first Olympic appearance in 1924. On that first Pinoy Olympic team was David Nepomuceno, a sprinter who ran the 100m and 200m Track races. He won no medal, but Nepomuceno holds the distinction of being the first Filipino Olympic athlete, the first to qualify and compete in the modern era Olympics.

AMSTERDAM 1928

Four years later, in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, the Philippine Islands had its first medalist in swimmer Teofilo Yldefonso.

Teófilo Yldefonso, a swimmer, brought home the bronze for the 200m breaststroke, 1928.

This was also the first Olympics wherein the ritual of lighting a cauldron at the end of the Opening Ceremony was initiated.

Back wall of the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium today and the tower with the first modern era Olympic cauldron, right, lit mechanically from inside by an employee of the Amsterdam Power Company.

LOS ANGELES 1932

For the most part, most of the Filipino medal victories seem to have occurred in pairs, starting with Los Angeles, 1932. Teófilo Yldefonso repeated his 1928 victory in the same category and won bronze again in ‘32. A second Filipino, Simeon Toribio of Bohol, also won the bronze in the High Jump. Toribio and Yldefonso share the distinction of being the only two Filipino Olympians who, up to that time, had participated in three Olympic Games although Yldefonso held a slight edge by being the only Filipino athlete to win two Olympic medals from two separate Games to date.

High-jumper Simeon Toribio on his was to Los Angeles, 1932.

BERLIN 1936

In the so-called “Nazi Games of Hitler,” two Filipinos again took home a pair of bronze medals: Miguel White in the 400m Hurdles in Athletics; and Jose Villanueva in Boxing, bantamweight class. (Remember that Villanueva name.) Also, the dramatic lighting of the flame in Olympia, Greece, and the succeeding Torch Relay had its origins in these Berlin Games of 1936.

[Note: Of the Olympic sports, the four one-on-one combat, physical contact, take-down sports (boxing, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling) are unique in that the two losers of the semi-final bouts no longer square off one 3rd place, bronze medal. Instead, the two semi-final losers are both automatically declared co-bronze medal winners, while the semi-final winners go on to slug each other out in a single, final bout for gold and silver. Hence, Filipino bronze medal winners in boxing, share the honor with the 2nd, other boxer even though they did not square off against each other.

THE MISSING GAMES – 1940 and 1944

If there had been no World War II, Japan would have hosted the Games of 1940 with Sapporo for Winter and Tokyo for Summer, respectively. But because of Japan’s militaristic moves in 1938, the 1940 hosting duties were rescinded from Japan and hastily assigned to St. Moritz, Switzerland, for Winter 1940 and Helsinki, Finland, for Summer 1940. In the meantime, London was already lined up for Summer 1944. When events turned into a total World War with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, everything was canceled until the Axis powers were defeated. Winter 1948 played out in St. Moritz; and the postponed Summer 1944 assignment became London 1948.

Also, as further penalty for being the lead aggressor nations of WW2, Germany and Japan were not invited to participate in the 1948 Games. Italy, being the minor Axis partner and defeated early, was invited to compete in both St. Moritz and London.]

LONDON 1948

The second London Olympics of 1948 at the old Wembley Stadium.  Note the Boy Scouts seated on the grass, right, beside boxes filled with pigeons for the “dove release moment.” — The second London Olympics of 1948 at the old Wembley Stadium. Note the Boy Scouts seated on the grass, right, beside boxes filled with pigeons for the “dove release moment.”

As a newly independent nation, the Philippines participated under its new name at the first post-war Summer Olympics, London 1948. While there weren’t any Pinoy Olympic victories to write home about that year, there was the case of Vicky Manalo Draves, a swimmer of mixed Fil-British ancestry who competed for the USA in 1948. Filipino sports fans like to “claim” her as their own.

She was born Victoria Manalo in San Francisco in 1924 to a Filipino father and English mother, first-generation immigrants. She also had a twin sister, Connie.

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Vicki encountered quite a bit of discrimination while training in both public and private swimming pools/clubs during and after the war. Although a fair-complexioned woman, Vicki was forced to use some facilities under her Anglo mother’s surname, Taylor. One of those venues was the Fairmont Hotel Swim Club, which used the pool that became the “lagoon” in today’s Tonga Room.

Disgusted by the SF Bay Area’s practices, Vicki’s coach, Lyle Draves, moved to southern California. She followed him there. Shortly thereafter, Vicki and Lyle were married.

The early incidents of discrimination Vicki faced gave rise to the apocryphal story that she was “forced to compete in the Olympics under her married Anglo-name, Draves.” Not so. The fiction was further reinforced by the reputation of then-US Olympic Committee head, Avery Brundage, a known racist. The “Vicki Manolo-name” yarn has no factual basis, for several reasons: one, Vicki was already Mrs. Draves legally—so there was no need to “hide” under her husband’s name– or by a directive from Brundage.

(That “hide Manalo-name” story seems to have arisen from Pinoy-first conspiracy theorists who were frustrated that the auspicious double name “Victoria Manalo” (“Victoria,” of course, is victory and “Manalo” is to win in Filipino) was not seen up on the London scoreboards which, for the most part, could only accommodate an athlete’s surname. Since Vicki did not use a hyphenated surname, the board listed her only as “Draves.”)

Vicki was competing in an international setting where she would encounter athletes from both her parents’ countries—the Philippines and Great Britain, those Games’ host. It is not inconceivable that Vicki might even have met her British relations on that trip and made connections with Filipino diving officials.

Long story short, Vicki won two golds (and again with the “pair” theme)—in platform and springboard. There were no Filipino Olympic medalists in 1948. A year after, Vicki and husband, Lyle, accepted an invitation to visit her father’s country of origin where she gave diving exhibition sessions at Rizal Memorial Stadium in Manila and other places around the Philippines. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1969.

As if to make up for all the discrimination Vicki had faced, the city of San Francisco named a public park in her honor in its South of Market district in October 2006. The two-acre Victoria Manalo Draves Park is located where her old elementary school was located and about four blocks from where she was born. Pundits like to point out that the Victoria Manalo Draves Park is two acres large, equal to “one acre per each of Vicki’s two gold” Olympic medals. So it goes that if Vicki had won even just half of Michael Phelps’ 23 Olympic gold medals, she would have earned the largest public park in honor of an athlete in San Francisco today, acreage-wise!

The City Park is located on Folsom Street between 6th and 7th Avenues.

See related PF story about Vicki Manalo Draves in Becoming Victoria — Positively Filipino | Online Magazine for Filipinos in the Diaspora.

TOKYO 1964

Finally, in 1964, rising out of the ashes of World War II, the ancient Japanese capital got its Olympic chance to host, all militaristic motives shoved aside. In this first Olympic Games in Asia, the Philippines pulled off a cross-generational win. In the featherweight Boxing division, Anthony Villanueva won a silver. Villanueva carried on a family tradition since his father, Jose, won a bronze in Berlin 1936 in the Bantamweight division. The Villanuevas were one of the few father-and-son tandems to won separate, individual medals in the same sport in two different Olympic Games.

At least Anthony Villanueva was honored with being on a Philippine postage stamp.  Pictures of him are scarce. — At least Anthony Villanueva was honored with being on a Philippine postage stamp. Pictures of him are scarce.

In spite of his unique Olympic heritage, Anthony was not so lucky in later life. For a while, he worked as a security guard at the Philippine Center/Consulate in New York City in the 1970s. But when he returned to the Philippines in the 1980s, he fell on hard times. He suffered multiple strokes and kidney and heart ailments. He attempted to cover his medical bills by trying to sell his silver medal for a million pesos several times, but there were no takers.

In the end, Anthony donated his medal to the Philippine Sports Commission. The champ passed away in 2014 at the age of 69, sick and penniless. Veteran sports journalist Chino Trinidad set up a trust fund in Anthony’s honor so that no Filipino athletes would be neglected like him in their twilight years ever again.

SEOUL 1988

In the second Summer Olympics held in Asia, Seoul 1988, the Philippines again won two medals. First was a bronze by Leopoldo Serantes in boxing, in the light flyweight (under-48 kgs).

Then there was the first “gold medal” by Arianne Cerdeña in ten-pin Bowling. However, Bowling was a “demonstration sport” at the Seoul Olympics. A distinction is made between regular sports and demonstration sports in Olympic record books. A demonstration sport is considered a saling-pusa (a consolation pity entry) sport in hardcore Olympic circles.

BARCELONA 1992

At the 1992 Games in Barcelona, commemorating the quintennial of the “discovery” of the Americas by Christopher Columbus for Spain, las Islas Filipinas won another pair of Olympic medals. First one was a regular Boxing Bronze by Roel Velasco (in the light-flyweight, under 48kgs category; Velasco’s photo below) and another demonstration sport bronze by Stephen Fernandez in Taekwondo. Fernandez is the Secretary of the PTA (Philippine Taekwondo Association) today.

ATLANTA 1996

For the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, the first global event to take ticket orders via the internet, a Filipino family Olympic boxing tradition was upheld. Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco did his older brother Roel’s 1992 bronze medal one better. “Onyok” lost the title fight but took home the silver medal in the same Boxing category as Roel’s, light flyweight (under-48 kgs.) silver. “Onyok,” formerly, a sailor, went on to act in local TV and films after his Atlanta 1996 triumph.

All in the family.  The Velasco brothers, both Olympic medalists in Boxing.  Older brother Roel on left, won a bronze in Barcelona; younger brother “Onyok” followed with a silver in Atlanta four years later. — All in the family. The Velasco brothers, both Olympic medalists in Boxing. Older brother Roel on left, won a bronze in Barcelona; younger brother “Onyok” followed with a silver in Atlanta four years later.

RIO DE JANEIRO 2016

For the first Games in South America, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, proved lucky for Hidilyn Diaz. She trail-blazed for Pinay athletes by winning the silver in the under 53-kgs Weightlifting. Prior to the Games in Rio, Diaz was a two-time World Championships medalist. Diaz will try for a medal repeat in Tokyo 2020.

Hidilyn Diaz, silver medalist at Rio 2016.

TOKYO 2020ne

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic logos and their respective mascots, left - Miraitowa, the Olympic boy; and Someity – the Paralympic girl, right.

For the return of the Games in Tokyo (also known as the Covid Games, wink-wink), the Philippines might have another pair of realistic medal contenders. First is the Japanese Filipina teenage golfing sensation, Yuka Saso, who became the first Filipina golfer to win the 2021 US Women’s Open championship in San Francisco in May.

There is a unique Filipino-Japanese connection between the Philippines’ two best hopes in Tokyo 2020. Saso is of a Japanese father and Filipina mother but prefers to retain her Filipino citizenship, while the other athlete, Carlos Edriel Yulo, trains in Japan. Hopefully, these auspicious linkage constitutse a “home court advantage” for both of them.

Barring injury or a rival performing miraculously better, Carlos Yulo has a very realistic shot at bringing home the first, honest-to-goodness Olympic gold medal in Gymnastics. Yulo (no relation to the more prominent Yulos of Canlubang) burst onto the scene in August 2019 at the 19th FIG World Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. In a blowout Floor Exercise performance, Yulo stunningly won a Gold. His talent and athletic prowess on the mat have been rated as the male equivalents to Simone Biles’ (USA), the reigning goddess of Global Gymnastics.

Gymnast Carlos Yulo—will that winning smile bring home the first true Olympic Gold?

Last word on “live” audience attendance in Tokyo is that it will be zero. Due to the dire Covid situation in Japan, only athletes, Games personnel (judges, referees, assistants), broadcasters/press and medical teams will be allowed on the field of play. As such, Tokyo 2020 will also be known as the first “fan-free Olympics.” For the safest viewing of the Games, there’s no place like home.

The Philippine Team heading to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

All that Glitters Is Not Gold

Speaking more of Japan and this very tense year of contemptible anti-Asian madness in the US, it seems timely to step back from our very pro-Pinoy stance and recall a rather unique story of an Olympic medal in a show of Asian brotherhood.

The Pole Vault finals in Berlin 1936 was turning out to be an American vs. Japanese men’s face-off. The first six places were split between the Asians and the Yanks. Finally, American Earle Meadows won first place with the height of 14’-3¼”, however, second and third places could not be decided because three athletes, Shuhei Nashida, Sueo Oe, and William Sefton all managed the same height of 13’-11¼”.

Unlike boxing, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling, the International Amateur Athletics Federation, the body that governs the sport, did not recognize ties of any kind, hence there were no multiple medals on standby. As this competition of 1936 was going past five hours, it was decided to eliminate a 4th place by drawing straws. American Sefton drew the short one; so he, in essence, was out of the medal standings.

That left the two Japanese vaulters Nashida and Oe to face off for 2nd and 3rd places. At the last minute, however, the two teammates refused to do a “sudden death” face-off against each other. For expediency’s sake, they agreed that Nashida would get the silver medal and Oe the bronze, although their records, including Sefton’s would state the same 13’-11¼” height on the record books. The two friends would settle the matter more equitably back home to Japan.

Japanese pole vaulters Nashida and Oe, right; and the half-bronze, half-silver Medal of Friendship from 1936.  Note the barely visible welded seam running down the middle. — Japanese pole vaulters Nashida and Oe, right; and the half-bronze, half-silver Medal of Friendship from 1936. Note the barely visible welded seam running down the middle.

When they got home, the two went to a jeweler, had their silver and bronze medals cut in half and welded together to form a hybrid medal. The two half-silver-half-bronze medals then became known as the Medals of Eternal Friendship.

This very Solomonic compromise is unique--the first and only time in Olympic history this was done. Since then, Olympic organizers have prepared for ties with extra medals and flags in reserve. If those Games were held today, Nashida, Oe and Sefton would all have received their own individual silver medals.

This story of friendship, equality and the win-win philosophy needed special mentioning here and now.

BEIJING 2022

After Tokyo, the next Olympic Winter Games, Beijing 2022, are going to happen right away in February next year – and again, barring last minute injury or illness, Filipinos will have another gold-medal favorite to cheer on, in Short-track Speedskating, this time, Julian Macaraeg. Although a Fil-Am, and can train only in the US in this sport, at this time, Macaraeg will represent the old country.

Julian Macaraeg at the last Youth Winter Games in Lausanne 2020.

If you can help Macaraeg finish his training for Beijing 2022, here is where to donate: https://www.gofundme.com/f/filipino-skater-julian-macaraegs-olympic-journey?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp%20share-sheet&fbclid=IwAR09JhfmC6_MeZlD2Oix9wF5e6PB9YoFzJmsdnVgwB4f1EJYefF_F26GXgM

PARIS 2024

After Beijing 2022, the next Summer Olympic Games are scheduled for Paris, France again. It would mark the centennial of the French capital’s last hosting in 1924 and also a century of Filipino summer Olympic participation (save for Moscow 1980). To get Paris ready for 2024, the French are rushing to replace the burnt-out roof of Notre Dame Cathedral, in time for the Games, a Herculean effort worth its own Olympian saga.

SOURCES:

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1067006/olympic-silver-medallists-from-the-philippines-honoured-at-awards-in-manila by Liam Morgan

www.Olympic.org

• Japan: number of gold medals awarded at Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games 2019 | Statista

The Olympic triumph of Vicki Manalo Draves | Global News (inquirer.net)

Vicki Manalo Draves Overcame Prejudice To Make Olympic History (teamusa.org)

The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics (2012 edition), David Wallechinsky, Aurum Press (GB), © 2012

https://www.rappler.com/sports/by-sport/boxing-mma/57931-anthony-villanueva-filipino-olympic-silver-medalist-dies

Filipino golfer Yuka Saso wins US Women’s Open championship (cnnphilippines.com)

Carlos Yulo could be first Filipino Olympic gymnastics medalist in Tokyo (olympics.com)

Filipino speed skater Julian Macaraeg set to compete in world championships (cnnphilippines.com)

Myles A. Garcia is a Correspondent and regular contributor to www.positivelyfilipino.com. He has written three books:

· Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies (latest edition, 2021);

Myles is also a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians, contributing to the ISOH Journal, and pursuing dramatic writing lately. For any enquiries: razor323@gmail.com

More articles from Myles A. Garcia

The Magazine

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