PALEMBANG, Indonesia – The heartbreaking experience in the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games almost ended the athletic career of Marestella Torres, but like champions who rise from every fall, the 30-year-old long jumper took it as a challenge to stage athletics’ biggest comeback and gain her fourth gold in the Southeast Asian Games.
“I was at the point of breaking up when I missed even the bronze in Guangzhou (China),” said Torres, who led Asian rivals with a 6.45m jump on her first attempt but missed a medal when she fouled the succeeding jumps.
“I was heartbroken just thinking how I fouled one jump after another, it never happened to me before,” said the four-time long jump champion.
The five fouls were brought about, in part, by lack of a training facility where she was to make the finishing touches in her run-up to the Asian Games after over three months of successful training and competition in Germany and other parts of Europe.
The ULTRA tracks where she trained for about a half month before Guangzhou were not up to international standards, not even close to standards of tracks where she improved on her Philippine and SEA Games mark of 6.68m.
“Parang tsiklet ang tracks,” said her coach Roselyn Hamero, who also hurriedly took her ward from the Ultra training six months ago because of the deteriorating condition of the government facility.
The uneven surface of the Ultra track also forced Torres to make adjustments which she carried with her to the Asian Games.
Athletics chief Go Teng Kok, who had spent his personal fortune to give Torres the best training possible for what could have been the first ever Asian Games gold medal of athletics since 1986, was no less sad at the outcome.
“Probably, I will no longer see a gold medal in the Asian Games during my lifetime,” said Go, then 67 years.
Torres wept all night at the Athletes Village in Guangzhou and hid herself from media.
She did not return to the tracks until after two months when she yielded to the proddings of friends who asked her to give it one more try.
She gradually returned to form with training under her new coach, the 32-year-ld Hamero, who last competed in the discus throw in 2001.
Her training brought her to the Rizal Memorial track and field oval, then to Dumaguete and Baguio and tried the Ultra again before her coach tried the Sta. Cruz Sports Complex which Gov. George Ejercito offered for the national athletes.