Tuesday, August 12, 2008 Perez opens campaign Friday
WITH the task at hand as daunting as scaling the Great Wall, Sheila Mae Perez opens her campaign Friday in the Beijing Games against the world's best athletes in the discipline, including a pair of mighty Chinese divers.
Diving after the 22-year-old Perez, who hails from Sasa, is China's 22-year-old Minxia Wu, who bagged a silver medal in the same event during the 2004 Athens Olympics in Greece. The latter also held the gold medal in Athens synchronized event.
Although she is not expected to win the gold, the Filipino diver is happy to be competing in her second Olympics and she hopes to at least land in the finals to cement her status as Southeast Asia's finest diver.
Perez, who hails from Davao City, won gold and a silver in the 2007 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Thailand and is one of the finest divers the country has ever produced.
She will compete in her favorite three-meter springboard opposing the world's best stating at 1:30 p.m. on August 15 at the National Aquatics Center.
China's Wu and Guo are the favorites to rule the event, posing challenge as the finest divers in Europe like Nora Borta of Hungary and Kajia Dieckow of Germany.
Guo, who is the 18th to dive, is the defending champion having pocketed the gold in Athens, a feat after her silver finish in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She also has a quite list of World and Grand Prix titles to her credit.
The 26-year-old Guo was the diver Perez cited as "very good and very skilled" and the one whom she considers as the stiffest competitor for every woman diver seeing action in the world's premier sports extravaganza.
Another Filipino diver from Davao, Rexel Ryan Fabriga, will open his campaign on August 22 in the men's 10-meter platform also the same venue.
A total of eight gold medals are at stake in diving, which is a centerpiece event in the world's premier sports spectacle.
Perez, before leaving for Beijing, had told Sun.Star Davao they will be using their old diving techniques at the Games and do away with the more difficult, complex dives.
"It's even more advantageous on our part to execute our original dives," said Perez, who first competed in the Olympics in the 2000 Sydney Games. (CRAM/MLSA)
