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 4×100-meter freestyle relay team to a historic gold medal, alongside teammates Xiandi Chua, Chloe Isleta, and Heather White. The squad secured the Philippines’ 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’ 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":"
The Olympic medalist delivered a standout SEA Games debut with eight medals in swimming events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7508","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":[{"1222":"big boost for ph swimming program \ud83c\udf0a","1223":"grabeh ang dami medalas ni kaylaaa \ud83d\ude0d\ud83e\udd47","1224":"di biro 3 gold 5 silver wow \ud83d\ude2e","1225":"kayla really showed heart for philippines \ud83e\udd79","1226":"silver grind \ud83e\udd48"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistic-lime-seal.62-72-44-115.cpanel.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}