Torres to put to rest ghosts of Beijing, Guangzhou

LONDON – The best chance for Marestella Torres to win an Asian Games gold medal in her event, the long jump, was in the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games where she made one good jump at the start but fouled on her last four attempts.

She was so downcast over her failure to improve on her first jump of 6.49 that she cried the whole night after the event and didn’t want to be interviewed the next day.

She was utterly frustrated because she worked hard for the Asian Games, having trained in Germany for six months and in at least three tournaments made leaps of over 6.71 meters, which she equaled to win the gold and establish a record in the Indonesian Southeast Asian Games a year later.

In fact, the eventual Asian Games winner Jong Soonok of Korea managed only a distance of 6.53. A gold could have given the 28-year-old Torres the push she needed to seek higher goals in the London Olympic Games.

Even Go Teng Kok, who spends his personal fortune to train the few athletes under his wings, would not hide his frustration.

“I knew from the start we would win a gold in the Asian Games,” he said quite slowly and sadly. “I’m getting old (he was 67 at that time), I will not be around anymore to see a gold medalist in athletics.”

The tragic four fouls, which accounted for her fourth place finish, were technical mistakes – uncalled-for miscalculations.

The take-off position is the line before which an athlete plants her left or right foot before taking the leap on the sand.

A perfect take-off is the result of a perfect run from about 30 meters. Coaches describe a perfect run as one done at “optimum, not maximum” speed and the first two phases of the long jump must be synchronized to achieve the longest possible jump.

In Europe, Torres was able to master the technique under German coaches in only a few months time. In the Asian Grand Prix, a Chinese athlete, impressed by Torres mighty leap, once conceded that the Filipina would win the gold in the Asian Games.

With her improvement in Europe, she and Go were confident they would win the country’s only gold in athletics.

Things were going for the better when a change in the PSC leadership forced Torres to discontinue her stay in Germany in the last stages of her training.

She requested that instead of coming back to the Philippines, she be allowed to extend her training and later fly directly to Guangzhou for the Games.

The new PSC policy would not allow this, so Torres was forced to come back to Manila to resume her training.

As Torres later revealed, the runway at the Ultra was not even, unlike the turf in Germany. This limited her ability to run at optimum speed during training. She was forced to adjust to the ill-maintained turf. It later affected her Guangzhou performance because in her over-eagerness to make a better leap on her second try, she mistimed her run and overstepped the line. She would do that three more times.

All this is now under the bridge. In London, Torres, now 30, doesn’t find herself too old to give it another shot.

‘’Handang handa na po ako,” said Torres, as she bumped into two Team Philippines officials on her way to the training venue just a short ride away from the Olympic Village.

The officials said she looks good, in top shape and ready to make up for her tragic experience in Guangzhou and yet another forgettable showing four years ago in Beijing where she finished only 34th out of 41 long jumpers with a paltry effort of 6.17 meters.

Torres said she’s ‘’90 percent ready’’, with more than a week to go before her event on Aug. 7.

The four-time SEA Games champion in her event gladly joined the three-week training camp provided free by London Games organizers, doing everything to make the most out of it.

‘’Nagtiyaga talaga ako sa camp. Alam kong marami akong makukuhang maganda dito,” she said.

One of them is the chance to adapt to the unpredictable London weather a good two weeks before the opening, something which she said has helped her a lot as she makes her second Olympic bid in a career that has its ups and downs.

Her chances?

It’s as difficult as having a souvenir shot with the Queen on a Sunday, given the formidable opposition headed by defending champion Maureen Higa Magi of Brazil, who did 7.04 in Beijing.

Her 6.71 mark qualified her only under the B category of the Olympic standard.

Building up for the London Games, Torres joined two Asian tournaments, with modest success. She wound up third in the kickoff leg of the Asian Grand Prix, and fifth in the second before preventing a shutout with a win in the final stage.

A few days before the camp, Torres showed she’s hell-bent on doing good this time by winning the Asian All-Stars in Almaty, Kazakstan, with a jump of 6.62 which she attained in her sixth and final attempt.