12:29 am | Friday, August 10th, 2012
LONDON—Only a few races after Rene Herrera got the biggest ovation for his last place finish in the men’s 5,000-meter run, he was upstaged as the darling of the crowd of 80,000 by a pioneering woman running in the heats of the women’s 800-meter run.
Sarah Attar was also dead last in her race, but she got an even bigger applause at the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday for a different reason.
She is the first Saudi woman to compete in Olympic athletics and she and Wojgam Shaherkami are the first women from the oil-rich kingdom to compete in the Olympics.
The 19-year old Attar has a dual citizenship, having been born and raised in California where she is an art student. Last month, a couple of weeks before the Olympics, she was featured in the New York Times which quoted her as saying:
“A big inspiration for participating in the 2012 Olympics for me is being one of the first women for Saudi Arabia to be going. It’s such a huge honor and I hope that it can really make some good strides for women over there to get more involved in the sport. I definitely think that my participation in this Olympic Games can increase women’s participation in sports in general. I can only hope for the best for them and that we can really get some good strides going for women in the Olympics further and just in sports in general.”
On Wednesday, she ran a slow and steady pace—more like a marathon than an 800-meter pace—as the rest of the women exploded at the start. Donning a white head scarf after the International Olympic Committee backed down on its earlier decision to ban the head gear and wearing long-sleeves and long running tights, Attar stuck to her pace throughout the race, finishing in 2:44:95—almost 33 seconds behind the heat’s winner, Janet Jepkongti of Kenya who clocked 2:01:04. She was about 200 meters behind when the Jepkongti crossed the finish line.
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The Philippine flag flew proudly among several others atop the grandstands of the BMX cycling venue at the Olympic Park in London as Daniel Caluag kicked off the action in men’s BMX cycling on Wednesday.
He was first to go among 32 competitors in the time-trial seeding round which determined the starting list of the four groups in the quarterfinals on Thursday afternoon. His name was on the leaderboard very briefly as the first rider, but one by one, all the other riders clocked better times. That put him at the bottom of the seeds. That means he will always have the outside track in the quarterfinals.
Short for “bicycle motocross,” BMX cycling, the newest event in the Olympic progam, was introduced in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. BMX uses single-gear bikes usually made of aluminum. In the London Olympics, riders start from a platform eight meters high, down an almost 45-degree ramp, through jumps, twists, turns, two more ramps and a tunnel. The track is 470 meters long for men and 430 meters for women. Each run is usually over in 40 seconds.
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Twelve of the richest athletes in the Olympic Games did what most other people do everyday—commute. Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Kevin Durant and the rest of Team USA basketball team crammed their oversized bodies into the trains, buses and the Tube to get to where they were going.
The multi-millionaire stars of the National Basketball Association have shunned their Spartan accommodations at the fortress-like Athletes Village of the Olympic Park and are instead billeted at a hotel in Central London. They rode the late-night javelin, an express train that travels from the Stratford station outside the Olympic Park to the St. Pancras station in just six minutes and posted pictures of themselves inside the train.
Tags: BMX cycling , London Olympics , Running
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| POS | COUNTRY | GOLD | SILVER | BRONZE | TOTAL |
| 1 | United States | 46 | 29 | 29 | 104 |
| 2 | China | 38 | 27 | 23 | 88 |
| 3 | Great Britain | 29 | 17 | 19 | 65 |
| 4 | Russia | 24 | 26 | 32 | 82 |
| 5 | South Korea | 13 | 8 | 7 | 28 |
| 6 | Germany | 11 | 19 | 14 | 44 |
| 7 | France | 11 | 11 | 12 | 34 |
| 8 | Italy | 8 | 9 | 11 | 28 |
| 9 | Hungary | 8 | 4 | 5 | 17 |
| 10 | Australia | 7 | 16 | 12 | 35 |
The Philippines will shoot for its first gold medal in six of the following events in the 2012 London Olympics: Athletics, BMX, Boxing, Cycling, Shooting and Swimming.
Men's boxing has for medals in the Olympics with Anthony Villanueva, silver in the Featherweight Division of the 1964 Games in Tokyo; Leopoldo Serantes, third in 1988 Seoul; Roel Velasco, third in Barcelona; and his brother Mansueto "Onyok" Velasco, second in the 1996 Atlanta Games.
The Philippines has not won a medal since Mansueto "Onyok" Velasco settled for silver in boxing via a controversial decision during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Harry Tañamor, the only Filipino predicted to win by the Sports Illustrated in its Olympic Preview edition, bows out in the first match up in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Arianne Cerdena won a gold in bowling at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, but Cerdena's gold was not included in the medal tally since bowling was considered only as a demonstration sport.
John Baylon, a nine-time Southeast Asian Games gold medalist, and Jerry Diño were the last Filipino Olympic qualifiers in the discipline Judo, having vied in the 1992 Barcelona Games.
The Philippine basketball team wound up fifth place—best finish for an Asian country in the Olympics to date—in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the first time basketball was played as an Olympic sport.
The Philippines is the first nation in the tropics to ever participate in the Winter Olympic Games.
The largest delegation the Philippines has ever sent to the Games was 53 in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
1972 was the last year the Philippine men's basketball team, which then paraded William 'Bogs' Adornado, Danny Florencio and Yoyong Martirez among others in its line up, has qualified for the Olympics.
The Philippines has only won medals in three events since joining the Olympics in 1924.
The men's Philippine Basketball team is the first country to ever score 100 or more points in the 1948 Olympics after clobbering Iraq,102-30.
The Philippines last reached the final round swimming 80 years ago when Jikirum Adjaluddin and Teofilo Yldefonso ended up in the final six in the 1932 Los Angeles Games.
The Philippines participated in the Winter Olympics three times, in 1972 (Juan Cipriano and Ben Nanasca, alpine skiing), in 1988 (Raymund Ocampo, luge) and in 1992 (Michael Teruel, alpine skiing).
The Philippines is the first country to compete and win an Olympic medal among Southeast Asian countries.
Teofilo Yldefonso is the first Filipino to win a medal and the only one to take home multiple medals. He finished third both in the Men's 200 meter breastroke during the 1928 and 1932 Olympics.
Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao, though not competing, carries the Philippine flag at the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The Philippines holds the record for winning the most medals without a gold haul with seven bronze and two silvers for a total of nine.
Mary Antoinette Rivero's tie for fifth place in Taekwondo is the closest any Filipino athlete came to a medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics.
With only eight athletes in six sporting events for the London Games, this will be PH's smallest delegation since 1996.
Is this US-based Filipina gymnast bound for the Olympics? 