Injured Estimar cedes gold to Chinese foe
With her legs and feet unable to deliver her trademark kick, Estimar used her fists for combat and tried to wrestle her opponent but the Chinese, aware of the injury the Filipina sustained in the quarterfinal and aggravated in the semifinal round, made a relentless attack to dominate the first round.
On instruction of wushu president Julian Camacho, Chinese coach Liu Yu Fu, also realizing the Filipina could not carry on with the apparent disadvantage without grave risk to injury, announced the withdrawal before the second round of the 52kg class of the sanshou (combat) event of the wushu competitions.
The Chinese crowd cheered the Chinese victory but erupted into a big applause as Estimar was hugged and given a victory lift by her opponent in the playing hall of the Beijing Olympic Sports Center.
Estimar received another standing ovation when she received the silver medal in ceremonies closing the three-day side event of the Beijing Olympic Games.
A moderate ankle injury in her winning match in the quarterfinal turned worse Saturday when Estimar’s lateral kick struck the ankle of her Iranian rival in the semifinal the other day.
Filipino doctors applied cold compress and gave her medication for inflammation but the swelling did not subside two hours before the morning bout.
“I wanted to win the gold but my body was aching,” said Estimar, 25. “At least I put up a fight.”
“Last night I thought I could bear the pain, so I decided that I should fight, but after the first round, my coach decided that I should not continue.”
“Silver is all right, at least I worked hard for it,” said Estimar, who trained here in January and stayed since June after winning the second slot from the Beijing world qualifying tournament for the Olympic special event.
She also lost to Li and took the silver in the tournament.
“I’m very happy with the performance of the team,” said wushu president Julian Camacho. “If this were an Olympic event, they could have come home with four medals.”
Camacho said Philippine Sports Commission chairman William Ramirez had pledged to give a bonus of P500,000 to the team. First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, who could not watch the match because of a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, had also pledged financial rewards from the private sector.
Willy Wang won the gold medal in taolu (form) event, while the bronze medals were won by Benjie Rivera and Marianne Mariano in the two other sanshou events.
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