BY WAYLON GALVEZ
With China out of consideration due to the possible effect of the deadly coronavirus, the team of Rio Olympics silver medalist Hidilyn Diaz will now hold training camp in Malaysia in time for the Asian Championship.
Diaz, 28, said her team is finalizing the details of their trip with the Philippine Sports Commission although they are initially scheduled to leave the country on Feb. 15 to train at the Bukit Posa Training Center.
The Asian Championship is set on April 16 to 25 in Kazakhstan.
“At the end of the day we just need to have an isolation training,” said Diaz yesterday. “This has been our slogan, that with good training, good rest and food, we expect a good performance in every competition.”
Diaz was supposed to train in China, but the health scare issue and the travel ban forced Team HD to look for an alternative.
Taiwan was also considered but apparently, it has its own ban on Chinese nationals due to the 2019 nCov.
Diaz’s head coach is Kaiwen Gao from China.
“Syempre medyo affected kami sa coronavirus. Coach ko Chinese, total ban sa Taiwan, so hindi kami maka-training dun. Parang useless din kung pupunta kami dun without him. So we decided to go to Malaysia,” said Diaz.
Diaz trained in both China and Taiwan prior to the 30th Southeast Asian Games here, which resulted to her first gold medal in the regional meet in the 55kg division in the women’s division.
A month later, Diaz bagged the gold medal in the same category in the 2020 ROMA World Cup in Italy.
The coming Asian Championship is the sixth Olympic Qualifying Tournament that Diaz is joining, which is a requirement aside from the points earned to be tabulated by the International Weightlifting Federation.
So far, the 28-year-old Diaz is at No. 5 spot with 3,632.0672 points in the IWF ranking.
“Kailangan in every competition we need to prepare. May mga kailangan lang ng adjustment sa training. Kailangan mas high intensity ang training ngayon, malapit na yung Asian Championship,” said Diaz.
“After ng Malaysia baka tuloy-tuloy na kami sa Kazakhstan, we need to be there five days before the competition, para mas maka-prepare kami sa weather, sa time zone and food.”
