Tangerine Volts

Muros lights Palaro '17 urn

By Liezl Marie N. Bajuyo

Philippine Sports icon Elma Muros- Posadas converged with this year’s delegates through lighting the Palaro urn, leading the howling admiration of around 7,000 athletes all over the country during the Opening Ceremony.

Muros was recognized and was awarded “Palarong Pambansa Lifetime Achievement” by President Rodrigo R. Duterte and DepEd Secretary Leonor M. Briones.

The 50-year-old former Olympian hauled 15 gold medals in the Southeast Asian Games. Eight of those were won in the East Asian Games titles in the long jump at the age of 16 in 1983. These massive achievements cemented her place as the greatest athlete the Philippines has ever produced in Athletics.

Sharing the torch with Muros was a 21-year-old tennis player from the Philippine Team, Marian Jade Saldajeno Capadocia, a pride of San Jose, Antique. With a career record of 8-5 in singles and 10-7 in doubles, Capadocia reached her highest individual ranking in 2011, when she became the No. 1 tennis player in the Philippines.

Completing the bearers of the ritualistic urn lighting  one of the known Native ‘Tankers’ of Antique, the 12-year-old Gulliver Clemente. He is set to showcase his best strokes in swimming for this year’s 2017 Palarong Pambansa - 7 events in the elementary division.

The countless glory of track and field queen, Elma Muros-Posadas strengthened present aspirant, Marian Jade Saldajeno Capadocia, to harden determination in achieving greater if not the greatest in her event. As Marian slowly forges her name at present, the like of Gulliver Clemente and the rest of the contenders in the 2017 Palaro continuously work harder day and night to be named after the greatest Philippine athletes.

Ultimately, our present is a collection of an interminable past. What makes us victorious today is the labor of an intimate, goal-oriented history. And so, this year’s torch bearers are a clear path of the influence past can do at present- making a resounding history in the future.