[EDITOR'S NOTE: Get to know the 22 Filipino athletes bound for the 2024 Paris Olympics through this SPIN.ph series]
A once-embattled Hergie Bacyadan knows all too well that the road to her golden dream won’t ever be a smooth one in the face of doubts.
But with the warrior’s spirit well-ingrained in her as an Igorot and Tanudan, Kalinga native, there’s no taking out the fight from Bacyadan on and off the boxing ring.
READ: Aleah Finnegan's Olympic dream comes true by returning to her Filipino roots
From venturing in two sporting disciplines before her foray into boxing, her Olympic journey went through unique pitstops — one she’d overcome after proving to herself, and to all who once looked down on her, that impossible is nothing.
And in a matter of weeks in Paris, Bacyadan could earn the distinction of being the first transgender male athlete in the 128-year history of the Games to win an Olympic medal.
Finding her way
Even before her boxing journey began, Bacyadan was already a history-maker in Philippine martial arts when she was named to the wushu national team in 2016.
In just roughly a year as a national, she’d go on to win two silver medals in no less than the Wushu World Championships and the first Sanda Asian Cup, both in the 65-kilogram weight class.
Then came a major career turning point for Bacyadan — making the shift to vovinam, a Vietnamese martial art from.
The 29-year-old fighter etched her name even deeper into the country's sporting history books by becoming the first Filipina vovinam world champion in 2023, the same year she won silver in the same event during the 32nd Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Cambodia.
Boxing past the odds
Controversy would soon come her way as the Russian national team lodged a protest in a bid to strip Bacyadan of her vovinam world title upon positing that she was a man — hence, making her ineligible for the women's division.
She'd voice out her condemnation of what she deemed to be an act of 'complete discrimination and disrespect' under the guise of a 'baseless and non-factual protest.'
"I may be born female but my sexual orientation is I’m attracted to women which I believe shouldn’t discriminate my qualification to become an athlete.
"This baseless and non-factual protest of Russia is a complete discrimination and disrespect to me and my fellow Filipinos & LGBTQIA+ Community. We all deserve to be treated fairly and equally, regardless of our sexual preference and orientation," Bacyadan wrote.
Bacyadan would retain her world championship win in vovinam but the debacle following her win became a precursor to her move to boxing, which paved her way to Paris after outlasting Venezuela's Maryelis Yriza in the sport's Olympic qualifying tournament.
Many have tried but there's no stopping Bacyadan now from shining in the pinnacle of sport as her true and authentic self in what will be the country's biggest Olympic boxing contingent in 28 years.
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