In weightlifting, an athlete challenges his/her limits by lifting the heaviest weight overhead for a single repetition. It’s just an amazing thing to do the impossible!
Olympic weightlifting is not a popular sport in the Philippines. It just received a recent fame boost due to the recent conclusion of the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics where Hidilyn Diaz, a Filipino weightlifter, won a silver medal. We believe that we can utilize this hype as a possible slingshot to improve the status of weightlifting in the country. Aside from the popularity the sport gained, which eventually gave it an identity the general masses know, the name Hidilyn Diaz has become a common name you hear nowadays.
The 2017 Hidilyn Diaz Open is an Olympic weightlifting competition aimed to attract the best of the best weightlifters all over the country. It is open to anyone, even international lifters. This will feature all 16 bodyweight categories of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), the IWF being the sole governing body of Olympic weightlifting in the world.
Bodyweight Categories
| Men’s | Women’s |
| 56 kg | 48 kg |
| 62 kg | 53 kg |
| 69 kg | 58 kg |
| 77 kg | 63 kg |
| 85 kg | 69 kg |
| 94 kg | 75 kg |
| 105 kg | 90 kg |
| Over 105 kg | Over 90 kg |
Prize incentives for the winners will be given to spark interest for the general public to pursue Olympic weightlifting as a sport. This is a major milestone for weightlifting in the Philippines as this will be the first to offer cash prizes. Olympic weightlifting is a low-cost sport since the only equipment you need is the barbell, and multiple lifters can share a single barbell. As such, a majority of Filipino weightlifters come from the lower-income bracket. With weightlifting as a potential means to alleviate poverty, we are giving people not only a way to improve their health through sport, but another chance in life as well.
Prize Incentive Scheme
| Gold | Php 3,000 |
| Silver | Php 2,000 |
| Bronze | Php 1,000 |
To make a good impression, we need to show that a professional, modern, exciting, one of a kind, world class Olympic weightlifting competition can be organized in the Philippines too. We want this to be regarded as the most prestigious Olympic weightlifting competition in the country and if possible, to be done annually. We are targeting more than a hundred lifters in this two-day event.
By investing in Olympic weightlifting now, we indirectly boost the grassroots program of Olympic weightlifting in the Philippines. In due course, we will have aroused the interest of the youth to try the sport and to educate parents and guardians to be more supportive of those who want to pursue weightlifting. This will lead to a rise in the sport’s popularity in our communities. These communities will eventually be the places where new weightlifters will emerge. More communities mean more weightlifters, increasing our chances in producing our future Olympians.
Ultimately, we want to have an opportunity to show the country that the sport of Olympic weightlifting can lead to the nation’s Olympic success, finally getting that elusive first Olympic gold. When the crowd sees a lot of participating lifters, we can prove that Olympic weightlifting can be for everyone, and that the Filipino anthropometric characteristics are highly suitable, if not perfect, for the sport of Olympic weightlifting. With this, we can attest that we can actually excel in this sport to be at par in the international level.
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