Before Hidilyn, there was Victoria Manalo

We all rejoice at Hidilyn Diaz’s triumph in Tokyo last week.

A nuance we should not avoid though was Victoria Manalo from Orani, Bataan, who won two gold medals in the London Olympics in 1948, in springboard and platform diving.

Racial discrimination was then rampant, so she had to conceal or fudge her non-Caucasian past. America had sort of made amends by naming after her in 2006 a two-acre park in downtown San Francisco. She passed away in 2010.

This is not to take away anything from wondrous Hidilyn, the second Olympic gold medalist with Filipino blood in our history, which we look at even as we mark our first century of Olympic participation in 2014.

R. A. V. SAGUISAG
Palanan, Makati City