Saturday, January 05, 2008 Davao beats Romy Sabaldan
SYDNEY Olympian and three-time Southeast Asian Games campaigner Sheila Mae Perez has a modest estimation of her diving prowess and promised only to try her best to get the last spot in the top 20 qualifiers for the 08-08-08 Beijing Olympics.
This, despite the uneventful gold and silver medal finish in her latest stint at the 2007 Southeast Asian Games in Thailand recently. The performance was good for P150,000 (P100,000 for the gold and P50,000 for the silver) incentives the springboard diver had received from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
In an interview at the regular weekly Davao Sportswriters Association (DSA) Thursday, Perez, who had learned the rigors of diving at a height double or triple that of the Olympic standards, has remained humble, but definitely more experienced since she started her stint at age 14.
Perez's latest record was way below the three-gold medal finish she took in the synchronized diving with Cecile Dominios and the individual three-meter and one-meter springboard in the 2005 edition of the SEAG.
The country's top woman-diver had lost her tandem in synchronized diving as Dominios opted to retire from direct participation and had since become a trainer among child divers at the Olympics-class Trace Aquatics Center in Los Banos, Laguna.
Under the consistent pounding by head coach Rommel Kong and Chinese training coach Zhang Dehu, Perez is expected to parade her wares in the February 19, 2008 World Cup in Xian, China.
The event is the Olympics qualifying thrust in a very competitive field of 100 women divers of world-class calibers. Only 36 divers will qualify for the Beijing splash come August.
This month, Perez will start training in China, a country that she had visited several times already under the auspices of the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC).
The confidence that Perez had shown all through her career as a diver can be traced to her experience of learning diving the hard way and in the most unorthodox manner.
Arrayed against a full contingent of a hundred well-trained international divers in such champion countries as the United States of America and host China, Perez's next try will be most challenging so far in her career.
Next Beat: Destination Beijing. (Sheila Mae Perez)
