Filipinos in the 2024 Paris Olympics

With the 2024 Paris Olympics happening from 26 July to 11 August, all eyes are on the Philippine team to replicate their Tokyo 2020 performance and bring home the gold.

Team 2020 saw weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz win the country’s first gold medal, while boxers Eumir Marcial, Carlo Paalam, and Nesthy Petecio brought home bronze and silver medals for the Philippines.

This year, the Philippines returns to Paris—where the country debuted as the world’s first Southeast Asian Olympic participant a century ago—to surpass their previous record and cement their place as a team to beat.

As the Olympics draws nearer, let’s get to know the 22 high-calibre Filipino athletes making their way to the City of Lights.

Ranking second in the world for men’s pole vault, EJ Obiena made his Olympic debut in Tokyo 2020, where he finished in 11th place.

Obiena comes from a family of athletes; in fact, his father was his pole vault coach until he was 18. He made waves as a college athlete, breaking national records when he competed for the University of Santo Tomas.

As a professional athlete, Obiena became a Southeast Asian and Asian Games gold medallist and record breaker. Merely months before the 2024 Paris Olympics, he broke another record in February 2024 by clearing 5.93 metres and going beyond the previous Asian indoor pole vault record set in 1998.

In his second Olympic appearance, Obiena aims to make it to the podium and bring home a medal for the Philippines.

A Filipino from Spain, John Cabang Tolentino holds the Philippine national record for men’s 100-metre hurdles, having completed the feat at 13.37 seconds.

The 22-year-old has been running for the Philippines since 2022 and has since been going up the ranks in international competitions. He recently won the country a bronze medal at the 2024 Asian Indoor Athletics Championships.

As of July 2024, the World Athletics Organisation ranks Tolentino in the world’s top 40 male athletes in 100m hurdles.

Filipino American Lauren Hoffman holds the national record for women’s 400m and 100m hurdles. Already a track athlete in Duke University, Hoffman joined the Philippine national team after learning her performance record qualified her to represent the country. She began running under the Philippine banner in 2023, breaking national hurdling records along the way.

“I have the potential to be something great,” she recently told Rappler. “I’m on track to do something great. And I would love to represent the Philippines while I’m competing professionally.”

Carlos Yulo made his Olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where he narrowly missed a podium finish for men’s vault by a few decimal points.

Artistic gymnastics enthusiasts are hoping Yulo will finally win a medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics despite entering the competition without a coach.

In 2023, Yulo amicably parted ways with his longtime trainer Munehiro Kugiyama. He was set to train with a new coach, Tomoharu Sano, that same year, but plans fell through after Sano was forced to bow out due to an injury.

Coachless, Yulo surprised the elite gymnastics community by failing to stick a landing in two routines at the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp, Belgium. Yet despite a rocky start, he still managed to secure an Olympic spot by excelling at floor exercise.

His most recent accolades include a bronze medal from the 2024 FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Cup Series in Baku, Azerbaijan and gold and silver medals in the same event’s Doha, Qatar leg.

CORRECTION: While he was initially coachless in the early days of his journey to the 2024 Paris Olympics, Yulo later found a coach in Aldrin Castañeda, who used to train the gymnast at the junior level.

Filipino American Aleah Finnegan began her gymnastics journey when she was just two years old, following in the footsteps of her three older sisters. In fact, her eldest sister Hannah was also part of the Philippine team and represented the country in the 2011 SEA Games.

Finnegan was already an elite gymnast in the United States and had even attempted to join the U.S. national team for the Tokyo 2020 Games. While she failed to qualify for Team USA, she did receive an invitation from the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines to join the country’s national team.

Finnegan bagged gold and silver medals in the 2021 SEA Games wearing Philippine colours. In 2023, she qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics by ranking 32nd in the women’s all-around event at the 2023 Artistic Gymnastics World Championship in Belgium.

The youngest athlete in the Philippines’ 2024 Olympic lineup, Levi Jung-Ruivivar has been garnering awards since she was 10 years old.

The 18-year-old Filipino American had been competing for the US until Philippine gymnastics coach Cliff Parks invited her to join the Pinoy national team. In April, she clinched a spot in the Olympics by winning silver in uneven bars at the 2024 FIG World Cup in Doha.

After her Olympic debut, Jung-Ruivivar will be joining the gymnastics team at Stanford University.

Emma Malabuyo already had a taste of the Olympics when she was an alternate for Team USA in Tokyo 2020, but she wanted more. By joining the Philippine gymnastics team, she traversed a journey of ups and downs to finally make it to Paris.

In 2023, she represented the Philippines in the Asian Games, where she bagged a silver medal for the floor event at the Asian Gymnastics Games. This was the highest award for a Filipina gymnast in the AGC.

However, Malabuyo endured two heartbreaks on the way to the Olympics: (1) her team at the University of California – Los Angeles lost the National Collegiate Athletics Association’s regional competition; and (2) she failed to secure an Olympic spot at the 2024 FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Doha.

Unwilling to surrender, Malabuyo gave it one more shot at FIG’s Uzbekistan leg, where she won a bronze in the individual all-around event and qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Boxing was the Philippines’ best sport at the previous Olympics, with three podium finishes in Tokyo 2020. For the Paris games, these three Olympic medallists will return to the international arena:

• Eumir Marcial – The middleweight fighter won a bronze medal in Tokyo and has revered boxer Manny Pacquiao’s blessing to compete for the country.
• Carlo Paalam – By winning his flyweight qualifying match last June, the Olympic silver medallist and former scrap metal scavenger returns to the Olympics as the Philippines’ flag bearer.
• Nesthy Petecio – Petecio will be joining Paalam as the country’s flag bearer at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Competing in the women’s featherweight division, this may be the southpaw’s last Olympic bout. 

Along with Olympic medallists, these two formidable fighters will be making their Olympic debut in the Paris Games:

• Aira Villegas – From Tacloban, Leyte, this flyweight boxer will be competing for the Philippines and for her brother and mentor Rominick, who once dreamed of joining the national boxing team.
• Hergie Bacyadan – With a background in martial arts, Bacyadan is already known as the Philippines’ first vovinam world champion. In Paris, the nonbinary athlete will be competing as a boxer in the women’s middleweight division.

John Ceniza is the first Filipino male weightlifter to go to the Olympics in eight years. The former porter and parking attendant was inspired to take up the sport by his brother Evangelito and by mentor and former Olympic weightlifter Nestor Colonia.

Prior to his Olympic debut, Ceniza made a name for himself by becoming a two-time SEA Games silver medallist and by winning a bronze medal at the 2020 Weightlifting World Cup in Rome, Italy.

In April 2024, he qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics by lifting a total of 300 kilograms at the 2024 International Weightlifting Federation World Cup in Phuket, Thailand.

Lifting a total 228 kg at the 2024 IWF World Cup, Elreen Ando bested Olympic gold medallist Hidilyn Diaz to secure a spot in the Philippine Olympic team. This will be Ando’s second time to compete in the Olympics, having joined Diaz in the Tokyo 2020 Games.

The Cebuana is already bemedalled, with a gold from the 2023 SEA Games and two silvers from the 2019 and 2021 SEA Games, respectively. In Paris, she will be competing in the women’s 59 kg division, after going down a weight class to improve her performance and odds.

Seen as the next Hidilyn Diaz, Vanessa Sarno will be competing in the women’s 71 kg weight division at the 2024 Paris Olympics.  The 20-year-old and two-time SEA Games gold medallist lifted a total 245 kg at the IWF World Cup, securing her spot in the Philippine Olympic team.

According to the Daily Tribune, “Vannessa Sarno will be entering the Paris Olympics as one of the best weightlifters in Asia.”

Sam Catantan is the first Filipino fencer to compete in the Olympics since Walter Torres in 1992. The University of the East high school alum qualified for the Olympics just 10 months after surgery for an ACL injury that had forced her to relinquish her gold medal at the 32nd SEA Games in Cambodia.

Apart from being in the Philippine Olympic team, Catantan is also team captain of the Pennsylvania State University’s fencing team.

Athlete Joanie Delgaco switched from volleyball to rowing and moved from Bicol to Manila at 17 to become a national athlete and help her family out of poverty.

Despite being shorter than the national team’s 5’7 height requirement, Delgaco made it to the rowing team and became a formidable rower, bagging gold, silver, and bronze medals in three different SEA Games. Her Olympic-qualifying performance saw her reach fourth place in the World Rowing Asian and Oceanian Qualification Regatta in Korea.

As the first Filipina rower to compete in the Olympics, Delgaca will be taking her father on his first trip abroad.

In the year prior to qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics, Bianca Pagdanganan made it to the top 10 in three different golf tournaments and reached runner-up status at the 2023 Ascendant LPGA Benefiting the Volunteers of America. Three years before that, Pagdanganan was named Rookie of the Year by the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

Golfing has always been a part of Pagdanganan’s life. She got into the sport as a little girl in the Philippines, accompanying her father to weekend rounds of golf. When she moved to the U.S. for university, she took the love of the game with her and eventually found her way into playing for the University of Arizona’s varsity team. It was during her time that the university won the 2018 NCAA championship for women’s golf.

This will be Pagdanganan’s second time in the Olympics following her debut in Tokyo 2020.

Dottie Ardina would have competed in Rio 2016 had it not been for the Zika virus scare. Eight years after withdrawing from the competition, Ardina is finally making her Olympic debut.

The golfer has been in the sport since she was five. At just 12 years old in 2006, she was the youngest member of the Philippine contingent to the World Amateur Team Championships.

Ardina went pro in 2013, quickly winning her first international championship at the 2014 Thailand Singha-Sat LPGA Championship. She recently finished seventh at the Dana Open in Sylvania, Ohio—just weeks away from the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Filipino-Japanese judoka Kiyomi Watanabe will be returning to the Olympics in a bid to redeem herself from her 2020 loss at the Tokyo Games, where she was the country’s flag bearer and the first Pinay judoka to compete at the Olympic level.

Watanabe currently ranks 92nd in the world. She is also a four-time SEA Games gold medallist and an Asian Games silver medallist.

Having grown up with her two Filipino parents in Toronto, Kayla Sanchez debuted in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under the Canadian flag and won the Great White North a bronze and a silver medal in swimming. However, her Filipino roots and her desire to make a difference in the Philippines convinced her to join the country’s national team two years later

“Aside from how much I’ve grown and how good everything has been in Canada, I needed to make this really difficult decision for myself and my family to take this opportunity to represent the Philippines,” Sanchez said in a 2022 statement.  “I want to inspire people that are like me to swim and get into the sport.”

A year later, the International Olympic Committee approved her change of nationality, allowing her to represent the Philippines in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Filipino American Jordan Hatch came out of retirement to swim under the Philippine flag in the 2024 Paris Olympics. A former varsity swimmer for UC Berkeley, Hatch had been competing for the Philippines since 2018 before he announced his early retirement in 2021.

He is a 2019 SEA Games silver medallist and holds the Philippine national records for the 500m butterfly and 100m butterfly events.

Kabayan Remit users all over the world can go online and watch the full livestream coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics using the Smart LiveStream App. Select competitions will also be streamed on social media via Smart Sports and Puso Pilipinas.

Want to take the excitement up a notch? How about hosting a virtual watch party with your loved ones in the Philippines? And to make it even better, treat them to their favourite TV snacks. Use Kabayan Remit to transfer funds safely and ensure the goodies make it home. Let’s make the 2024 Paris Olympics an unforgettable experience for the whole family!