Wong has cemented herself as one of the country’s best SEA Games athletes ever.
Coming into her fourth Southeast Asian Games, all eyes were on Agatha Wong as many believed she could bring home the gold once more in wushu.
True enough, that was the case as Wong captured her fifth SEA Games gold, ruling the women’s taijiquan-taijijian event on Friday.
The 24-year-old Wong won the gold medal by achieving a total score of 19.623 in both events.
In the taijiquan event, Wong would only rank third in the leaderboard after scoring 9.5800. But come the taijijian event, Wong would grab a score of 9.683, securing the first position to win the gold medal.
To make her gold medal even more satisfying, Wong did all of this while she was in her freshman year of medicine school.
“Hindi ko inexpect na mananalo ako kasi I'm also a med student, so I'm in my first year of medicine and I didn't graduate from a science degree, so medyo mahirap siya for me to balance my training,” said Wong.
The freshman med student from the University of the East-Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center admitted that she had been thinking about her school work even as she was set to compete once more in the SEA Games.
“I've been training hard naman pero yung nasa utak ko is yung backlogs ko sa school,” said Wong. “Everyone was expecting na I would win pero ako I can't even expect myself to win, so parang sobrang hard niya i-manage mentally.”
When asked how she was able to manage her training and studying in med school, Wong had a simple answer.
“Pag gusto mo may paraan,” said Wong. “Mahirap siya pero kakayanin kasi I really like this sport.”
(With reports from Jaime Ascalon, One Sports)
(CF)