Olympic medalist Kayla Sanchez made a stunning debut at the 33rd Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, capping her formidable performance with a haul of three gold and five silver medals in the swimming competition.<\/p>\n
Sanchez, who previously secured two Olympic medals for Canada at the 2020 Tokyo Games, expressed her pride in representing the Philippines this time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very special. I love my teammates, my whole family is here, and I really hope I made the country proud,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sanchez immediately made her presence felt by anchoring the 4\u00d7100-meter freestyle relay team to a historic gold medal, alongside teammates Xiandi Chua, Chloe Isleta, and Heather White. The squad secured the Philippines\u2019 first-ever gold in that event since joining the Games in 1977.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first race was a relay, and it was not just me who did it. They all made me less nervous\u2026 It was fun to have them,\u201d a visibly thrilled Sanchez said, crediting her teammates for easing her pre-race tension.<\/p>\n
On her second day, Sanchez momentarily shattered the meet record in the 50m backstroke preliminaries, clocking 28.47 seconds, surpassing Indonesia\u2019s Wolf Masniari\u2019s 2023 mark.<\/p>\n
However, in a tightly contested final, she settled for silver as Masniari reclaimed the top spot.<\/p>\n
Channeling her disappointment, Sanchez delivered a dominant performance in the 100m freestyle the following day, claiming her second gold with a time of 54.82 seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got motivated. I was heartbroken [after that silver finish]. I felt that I let the country down, and I am just so proud to achieve this gold,\u201d she shared, revealing the emotional drive behind her win.<\/p>\n
She completed her golden hat-trick on her fourth consecutive day of competition, taking the 100m backstroke title with a winning time of 1:02.35.<\/p>\n
Sanchez also secured five silver medals, three in individual events\u2014the 200m freestyle, 50m backstroke, and 50m freestyle\u2014and two in relays: the 4x200m freestyle relay and the 4x100m medley relay, significantly contributing to the Philippines\u2019 overall medal count.<\/p>\n
The Philippine swimming team capped the event with three golds, eight silvers, and two bronze medals.<\/p>\n
The other three silvers were from White (100m Freestyle), Chua (200m backstroke), and Gian Santos (men\u2019s 200m individual).<\/p>\n
The bronze medals also came from White (50m freestyle), and Logan Wataru Noguchi (50m butterfly). (PNA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Her medal haul added momentum and pride to the Philippine delegation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-great-filipino-story"],"pageone_source":{"pageone_source":"PNA","author_name":"PAGEONE Online Network"},"_pageone_source":"PNA","zyndk8_nxtgen_metadata":{"nxtgen_comments":[{"1228":"wow historic relay gold, lakas ng ph swimmers \ud83d\udd25\ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\udded","1229":"good example of resilience \ud83c\udfca\u200d\u2640\ufe0f","1230":"swimming fans so happy ngayon \u2728","1231":"grabe yung swimming events, panalo lahat \ud83d\udc4f","1232":"go kayla go philippines \ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\udded"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dynamic-silver-sheep.82-197-71-20.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}