Hang time for Cebuano golden girl

Young Didal wins it with flawless, daring, original tricks 

JAKARTA – Team Philippines saw the performance of a lifetime of  its fourth Golden Girl, a Cebuano carpenter’s daughter who carved out a breathtaking, eye-popping win in an unlikely sport – skateboarding – which put the Philippines high up in the medal standings and on course for what could be its best outing in memory in the Asian Games.

Margie Didal, a 19-year-old Lahug, Cebu native, emerged as new sporting heroine as she reigned supreme in the new Asiad sport of skateboarding that is also set to be introduced in the  2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Picking up the sport in the Lahug park where her mother sells “kwek-kwek,” Didal kicked, pushed and soared to Asiad glory and, in the process, put the country in a position to match or surpass its fourth best showing in the quadrennial continental games with five gold medals in the first Asiad in New Delhi in 1951.

With the four gold collections from the all-female bunch of weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, the lady golfers (Yuka Saso, Bianca Pagdanganan and LK Go) and Didal, Team Phl has already duplicated its four-gold harvests in Bangkok in 1978, Seoul in 1986 and Doha in 2006.

The contingent can still make a push in the medal board with three boxers already in the semifinal round and judo’s best bets set to plunge into action today.

The Philippines improved to 17th from 19th the previous day, but remained at fifth among Southeast Asian teams with a haul of four gold and 13 bronze medals.

The Philippines was at 16th before Vietnam jumped past the Philippines and Malaysia on Thi Thu Thao Bui’s golden leap in women’s long jump that jacked up its medal tally to 4-15-13 (gold-silver-bronze).

Indonesia (30-22-356 remained a fixture at No. 4 in the overall race behind China (101-66-50), Japan (51-47-63) and Korea (37-41-50). Thailand (9-13-35) was at No. 10 overall and was second among the SEAG competitors, followed by Vietnam (4-15-13), Malaysia (4-11-9) then the Philippines  (4-0-13).

Also providing boost for the Philippines on Day 10 of the Jakarta/Palembang Games was Almohaidib Abad, an 18-year-old Gen. Santos native who placed third for the bronze in pencak silat men’s singles, duplicating the earlier feats of teammates Dines Dumaan, Jefferson Rhey Loon and Cherry May Regalado.

Thus, the Phl pencak silat team has bettered the three-bronze production of the Phl taekwondo squad through the men’s and women’s poomsae teams and 57kg bet Pauline Louise Lopez.

Indonesia’s Sugianto Sugianto won the gold medal to add to his world title in 2016, while Sadara of Thailand clinched the silver medal. Indonesia has won all nine pencak silat golds.

At 18, Abad became the country’s second youngest medalist after 17-year-old Yuki Saso, who won golf’s individual gold and towed the Philippines to the team title earlier this week.

From the Pencak Silat Hall in mid-morning, the Phl battle cry shifted over to the JIExpo in the afternoon where Talakag, Bukidnon pride Carlo Paalam put up a proud performance to advance to the flyweight medal round.

Paalam outfought seasoned Kazakh rival Termirtas Zhussupov, 4-1, for a sure bronze medal and a possible gold.

Late in the night, middleweight Eumir Marcial Lopez utterly outclassed South Korea’s Kim Jinjea,  5-0,  to advance to the semis along with early semifinalist  flyweight Rogen Ladon.

The three take a rest today for their semifinal bouts tomorrow.

In kurash, Noemi Tener, Lloyd Dennis Catipon and Jennielou Mosqueda took the exit right in their first matches.

In squash, the men’s team shut out Nepal, 3-0, but the women’s team dropped a 1-2 loss to Korea.

In athletics, Fil-Am Kristina Marie Knott struggled to finish seventh out of eight finalists, clocking 23.51 seconds in the 200 m dash ruled by Edidiong Odiong of Bahrain.

Odiong turned in a 22.96-second clocking to clinch the gold and complete a sprint double after earlier ruling the century dash. India’s Dutee Chand took the silver in 23.20 while Chinese Wei Yongli timed 23.27 to bag the bronze.

Trenten Anthony Beram failed to reach the 200m finals.

Judokas take to the mat at 9 a.m. today.

Kyomie  Watanabe, the 2017 World Cup gold medalist and three-time Southeast Asian Games  gold medalist (2013, 2015, 2017), vies in the first round of the Women’s -63kg.

 Kurayoshi Megumi, ranked 165 in the world, will be up against Hong Kong’s 30th-ranked Leung Po Sum in the round of 16 of the Women’s -57 kg.

Mighty China came away with an expected straight-set 25-15, 25-9, 25-7 romp over Team Philippines to keep its unbeaten run in women’s volleyball it is tipped to dominate.

The Chinese turned the match into a virtual practice game, scoring easily and heavily on a number of crisp spikes that the Filipinas couldn’t handle and foiling their rivals’ token attacks with their intimidating blocking.

Jaja Santiago, Alyssa Valdez and a couple more did sneak in hits of their own but some of Team Phil’s points also came from the Chinese errors and mishits.

The Chinese were just so unforgiving in the third where they unloaded 16 hits while limiting the Pinays to just two points. They padded their lead to 22-4 before a service error stalled their charge and Santiago scored on another hit.

A backrow attack and another block put China at match point stymied by another service error but a running off-speed attack ended the lopsided contest.