Hidilyn Diaz successfully lifts first attempt in snatch at 63 kgs in women’s 59 kgs class of weightlifting at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou on October 2, 2023. PSC-POC MediaPool/file

MANILA, Philippines – For bringing pride and glory to the country with every lift she did in an outstanding sporting journey, a weightlifting icon is set for enshrinement in the Philippine Sportswriters Association (PSA) Hall of Fame.

Hidilyn Diaz, the lady from Zamboanga City responsible for charting the name of the Philippines in the gold medal table of the Olympics after nearly a century, will be bestowed with the distinguished accolade during the San Miguel Corporation-PSA Awards Night at the Manila Hotel on January 27.

The 33-year-old lifter is just a few years removed from her historic feat of giving the country the breakthrough gold in the Olympiad during the 2020 Tokyo Games in what served as the highlight of a stellar career that had its roots in the small barangay of Mampang.

But the impact brought about by her Olympic success and other significant victories in the international front made her deserving to be enshrined in the PSA Hall of Fame alongside the greatest athletes in Philippine sports.

In what is the grandest Awards Night ever by the country’s oldest media organization headed by its president Nelson Beltran, sports editor of The Philippine Star, Diaz will stand side by side with first ever Filipino Olympic double gold medalist Carlos Yulo as they share center stage in the formal affair.

Yulo, 24, is the winner of the coveted Athlete of the Year honor.

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Diaz is the latest legendary athlete to be elevated in the Hall of Fame by the country’s sports writing fraternity since the late track and field grate Lydia De Vega in 2022.

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Others enshrined in the PSA ‘Hall’ were bowlers Paeng Nepomuceno and Bong Coo, chess grandmaster Eugene Torre, pool idol Efren ‘Bata’ Reyes, the late FIDE president Florencio Campomanes, and the eminent boxer Manny Pacquiao.

Diaz virtually grew in the eyes of Filipino sports fans.

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The daughter of a tricycle driver who turned into farming and fishing, she started lifting weights at the age of nine by using makeshift barbels, eventually joining her first major competition in the 2002 Batang Pinoy, before becoming a member of the national team two years later at the age of 13.

She won her first medal – a bronze – in the 2007 Nakhon Ratchasima Southeast Asian Games as a 16-year-old lass, and a year after, competed in her very first Olympic in the 2008 Beijing Games as a wild card entry. She also qualified in the 2012 London Games, but for the second straight time, came home empty handed.

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It wasn’t until the 2016 edition of the Summer Games in Rio De Janeiro when Diaz, an Air Force officer, finally scored a breakthrough by winning the silver medal in the women’s 53kg category, ending the country’s medal-less campaign for two decades in what proved to be a prelude to a historic golden feat in Tokyo four years after.

One of only four Filipino Olympic multi-medalists aside from Yulo, Nesthy Petecio, and the late Teofilo Yldefonso, Diaz also won gold medals in the World Championships, Asian Championships, Asian Games, and the SEA Games.

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