GOOD. Better. Best.
A gold medal in the SEA Games is good. A gold medal in the Asian Games is better. But a gold medal in the Olympic Games ranks best.
For an athlete to claim bragging rights insofar as one’s performance on the international stage is concerned, he/she must win at least a gold medal in one of the three Games mentioned.
And, of course, the Olympic gold tops
them all.
Gymnast Carlos Yulo has won all three gold medals in all three Games. Sweep. The only Filipino thus far to have done that.
Pole vault star EJ Obiena has won golds in both the SEA Games and Asian Games but not the Olympic gold.
Obiena was a four-time SEA Games winner; he last won in the 2025 Bangkok SEA Games. EJ just won a second straight Asian Games gold in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan.
But with age fast catching up with him, Obiena, who turns 31 on Nov. 17, will probably have his last stab at Olympic gold in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympiad — an almost impossible mission as he has to deal with Armand Duplantis, the flying human born in Lafayette, Louisiana, USA, to an American father and a Swedish mother but competes for Sweden in international competitions.
Nicknamed “Mondo,” Duplantis, 26, holds the Olympic record of 6.25 meters, which is way above Obiena’s personal best of 6 meters (EJ did 5.91 last month in eclipsing his Asiad mark of 5.90). Duplantis set his 6.25 in winning the gold medal in the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Since the Philippines debuted in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924, only two Filipinos have won gold medals: weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz in 2020 Tokyo and Yulo in 2024 Paris. Yulo even won twice in Paris in the floor exercise and vault events — feats he duplicated
in Nagoya.
Diaz, 35, has retired, but her legacy as the country’s first Olympic gold medalist is already etched in stone. She is now busy developing aspiring lifters at her weightlifting academy.
Alex Eala, the current Filipino tennis sensation, has yet to win the Asian Games and Olympic gold medals, although she has won the gold in the 2025 Bangkok SEA Games. She settled for another Asiad bronze in the just-ended Nagoya Games.
But Eala is only 21. And although her 2025 SEA Games gold is a mere “good” in the equation, Eala might just suddenly stun us with a win as big as an Asian Games gold or an Olympic gold — as in a Grand Slam triumph maybe in 2027?
You will never know.