Millions of Filipinos worldwide cheered as one while viewing the incredible gold winning moments of Carlos Edriel Poquiz Yulo in the 2024 Paris Olympics in the floor exercise and vault apparatus competitions.

The two golden days for Philippine sports last weekend were surreal. A Filipino athlete winning Olympic gold medals one night after the other as if they were easy pickings? Impossible!

But like in a dream, the impossible miraculously happened. Definitely not what we are used to seeing. Gymnastics is not the Pinoy’s favorite sporting event after all because we are of course a basketball crazy nation in spite of the unrealistic expectation that we can ever excel in a sport meant more for the 7-foot giants of Europe and the US.

However, after Caloy’s first gold medal, I would surmise most in the Philippines and without a doubt even Pinoys beyond our shores braved the different time zones to watch him in action perform in his much anticipated second gymnastics finals, the vault, reportedly his favored event.

Surely millions of eyes in the Philippines were glued to their screens late Sunday night to watch the events unfold on live stream while they were happening in Paris as Yulo confidently strode to the platform, clearly more relaxed and broadly smiling compared to the tense moments of his first event.

Then, as if we were transplanted to the event site at Bercy Arena, we relived the anxious moments as we waited with bated breath to see if his scores would hold as his competitors fell one by one by the wayside. And after the tally of the final scores flashed on the screen, with the victory certain, viber chat groups exploded with the news of how our newest Pinoy hero performed his floor and vault routines flawlessly.

Caloy’s twin victories, like the countless wins of Manny Pacquiao in his prime and Hidilyn Diaz’s breakthrough win in the Tokyo Olympics, like a soothing, healing balm, united the country once more, forgetting the high prices, forgetting the West Philippine Sea conundrum, forgetting all the political maneuverings, and all our mundane concerns in life, as Pinoys beamed with pride, with a smile on our faces and high-fives all around, clapped our hearts out and forgot all the sorrows and pains our country is facing as we, with our hands placed firmly on our chests, sang the Lupang Hinirang along with Caloy as the Philippine flag was hoisted.

What is it about sports victories that all peoples are enamored with? Well, let’s look back at the very origin of the Olympics itself. Mankind’s history is replete with conflict, and if we are to believe our theologians, perhaps this was brought about after God’s admonition to Adam and Eve as they fell from grace and were banished from Paradise, and eventually from Cain’s killing of his brother Abel.

In the eighth or ninth century BC, the Oracle at Delphi advised Iphitos, the king of Elis, to start a peaceful sporting competition to end the constant wars plaguing Greece. The other monarchs, Cleisthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta, agreed and thus the Olympic Games was born in 776 BC, along with a caveat to allow the athletes and their families to travel safely to and from Olympia every four years, for seven days before and after the Games. This was to be known as the Olympic Truce.

Gymnastics is not the Pinoy’s favorite sporting event after all because we are of course a basketball-crazy nation.

This was reintroduced in 1992, almost a full century after the Olympic Games were revived in 1894, when the International Olympic Committee negotiated with the United Nations to allow the former Yugoslavia to participate in the Barcelona Summer Games. In 1993, the UN General Assembly urged all member nations to adhere to the Olympic Truce in all future Olympic Games and this was formally observed during the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer.

Since then, this principle has been adopted as a UN Resolution every year before the Olympics and has been used to promote peace, dialogue and reconciliation in areas of conflict during and beyond the Olympic Games period.

Recent history is filled with dramatic breakthroughs such as the “ping-pong diplomacy” between China and the US in 1971 that re-opened the gates of friendship and peace that had been closed since 1949 due to the Korean War; or the stunning Springboks triumph in the 1995 Rugby World Cup in Johannesburg which dramatically united the South African blacks and whites under Nelson Mandela in cheering their national team to victory; and the unprecedented joint march by the North and South Korean teams behind a “Unified Korea’’ flag during the PyeongChang Winter Games in 2018.

Indeed, peace for all mankind is the ideal and ultimate objective of sports. Let’s hope Caloy Yulo’s phenomenal double gold victories and the pride and goodwill we Filipinos now feel will linger for a long time to come, at least, hopefully until our next Olympic gold medal.

Until next week… OBF!

For comments, email bing_matoto@yahoo.com.