Photo sourced from Northbound Asia
We have another winner at an international sporting event: Josephine Medina won the bronze medal for table tennis at the 2016 Rio Paralympics, becoming the first Filipina to take home the award in this year’s run.
She beat last year’s European Para Championships silver medallist Julianne Wolf, winning three straight sets at the Women’s Singles Class 8 division.
Medina, who has polio, is also the second Filipino to win a medal at the Paralympics, after powerlifter Adeline Dumapong won a bronze at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics.
Just last year, Medina won the gold medal in the ASEAN Para Games in Singapore. The Rio Paralympics is Medina’s second appearance, after she placed fourth at the 2012 London Paralympics.
She told the International Table Tennis Federation, “I used to compete with able-bodied athletes and qualified for the national team but they told me you cannot be in the national team for the able-bodied as you are disabled. That rejection has become my inspiration and I train hard and I just want to prove that disability is not a hindrance in achieving your goal. It’s just an instrument in reaching success in your life.”
Senator Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara filed a resolution for Medina to get a cash incentive for her win. In his resolution, he proposed that Paralympics gold medalists will get P5 million, silver medalists P2.5 million, and bronze medalists P1 million. He added that their coaches will also get a cash incentive half of what the winning athlete will receive.
The Paralympic Games is described as a “a major international multi-sport event involving athletes with a range of disabilities, including impaired muscle power (e.g. paraplegia and quadriplegia, muscular dystrophy, post-polio syndrome, spina bifida), impaired passive range of movement, limb deficiency (e.g. amputation or dysmelia), leg length difference, short stature, hypertonia, ataxia, athetosis, vision impairment and intellectual impairment.”
It is immediately followed by the Olympic Games, and is set in the same city.
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