August 20, 2024
MANILA – The Paris 2024 Olympics have come and gone, and it went better than we expected. We predicted that Carlos Yulo would be the top Filipino Olympian to watch out for this time around, and our gut feel was rewarded with not one, but two gold medals. That’s history.
The Olympics was just 16 days (!) but so many things happened in that span of a little over two weeks that the whole thing might as well have felt like three whole months. It’s what happens when the news cycle is always on from the heart of the Games. Social media may have just made Paris the most controversial Olympics in recent memory, so here are five things I need to react to.
The Philippines seems to be good at breaking (outdated) gender norms
The biggest story for the Philippine delegation is Yulo winning golds for men’s gymnastics. Between that and Hidilyn Diaz’s first gold for weightlifting three years ago as well as our women boxers bringing home bronzes this time around, it seems that the country does have a knack for doing well in sports that aren’t “stereotypically” masculine or feminine.
Of course, three sports are a small sample size, but it is fun to think about and encourage anyone to pursue any sport they want to do. We now shouldn’t discount the potential of any Filipino to win big just because a sport is traditionally “for boys” or “for girls.”
Whoever is in charge of the other sports are still embarrassing
This is not another “basketball vs. other sports” take, but it is still pretty shameful that the others either can’t get support or don’t seem to care. The most embarrassing situation is with the Filipino golf delegation, who couldn’t even get a bare minimum of bespoke team jerseys. They had to make do with taping a Philippine flag to their shirts, prompting other Olympians to ask why they couldn’t even be given the courtesy of proper gear.
Again, this is not a “reduce basketball funding” take: It’s now a “support other sports” call. Our athletes have done better this year, and it’s downright shameful how the very much upper-class sport of golf couldn’t even be bothered.
People really exposed themselves over Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting
Perhaps the biggest story of the Paris Olympics, a lot of Filipinos had a lot of opinions over Algerian boxer Imane Khelif (and to a smaller extent, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting).
In case you were blissfully unaware, this is because both athletic women did not look hyperfeminine due to an alleged increase in testosterone or an XY chromosome pairing (take your pick), leading Italian boxer Angela Carini to throw her match with Khelif over protests that she was actually a man. Misinformation outlets quickly presented Khelif as a transwoman competing in the women’s division when this was clearly not the case as she is a natural cisgender woman. (That, and it is verifiably illegal in Algeria to be homosexual or transsexual.)
The Filipino rage machine was quick to condemn Khelif for not being a pure woman, and it was another straight-up embarrassment. It exposed Philippine society as still being shamefully backwards and dominantly conservative despite headways made by the LGBTQIA+ community. The only good thing was that this outrage wasn’t exclusive to Filipinos, and Khelif ended up avenging herself with the actual gold medal in her division.
Lastly, the better part of all this is that nothing was said about actual transman Hergie Bacyadan or bronze medalist Nesthy Petecio, who also did not look like your heteronormal women. (Petecio is also pretty bulky, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if an opponent protested her.) But had they made even bigger splashes, I’m sure something would’ve come up.
The Olympics are fun to watch by meme and reel
I’m not sure what it is about this particular Olympics as we’ve had memes for decades now, but Paris felt like the most-memed Games in history. For those who don’t have the mental bandwidth to keep up with the events at night, following everything via memes (along with clips, reels, and news articles) feels like we were there to watch it all anyway.
If anything, the Olympics’ use of YouTube, Shorts, TikTok, Reels, and every short-form video platform under the sun was a major win for its exposure. At this point, if you’re any sort of sports league or event and you’re not broadcasting in short-form video, you’re leaving money on the table.
Yulo’s big wins sparked a much-needed generational reckoning
Who would’ve thought that Yulo’s actual victory was not his two Olympic gold medals, but to get an entire country to face its own toxic traditional culture?
This has very little to do with the sport of gymnastics itself now, but it does hold a mirror up to the circumstances surrounding athletics and poverty in the Philippines. Children are many parents’ meal tickets, especially if they have a transcendental talent, and Yulo’s exposure of his mother’s alleged theft of his winnings has also exposed a lot of opportunistic and entitled parents who feel that Angelica Yulo has either done nothing wrong or deserved her son’s forgiveness just because she’s still his mother.
Now millennials and Gen Zs making their own money are clapping back at older generations who think this oppressive behavior is still okay. More importantly, the possibility of changing the culture for the better is now more realistic with such a high-profile feud forcing everyone to examine their beliefs (if they are willing to reflect).
Of course, that’s just a symptom of a larger disease. There wouldn’t be any theft or young athletes wouldn’t be seen as a golden ticket to comfort if many Filipinos weren’t living in poverty. And it’s easy to distract people from this big picture with petty, scandalous squabbles like this.
It certainly helps that it’s also easy to keep people entertained with sports, too—whether you’re watching or playing.