[EDITOR'S NOTE: Get to know the 22 Filipino athletes bound for the 2024 Paris Olympics through this SPIN.ph series]
THE Filipino in him had John Cabang Tolentino falling in love with basketball and at times, football, during his childhood days.
But he would soon shift his attention to track and field, specifically hurdles, when he saw one of his childhood buddies do very well in the tracks.
“We were playing basketball, football, and all those stuff,” Tolentino said of his early days in Spain.
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“Another friend went to track and field, and he was so good. And I started from there,” recounted the Filipino hurdler in an interview over the One News show Afternoon Delight.
Since then, there was no turning back for Tolentino, who took a liking for hurdles at the young age of 14.
Eight years later, the now 22-year-old trackster is living the dream of every athlete as he compete in his first-ever Olympics as part of the 22-man Philippine delegation in Paris.
Tolentino, whose parents are both Filipino, is taking part in the men’s 110-meter hurdles as one of three Philippine track and field bets in the Olympiad, joining fellow hurdler Lauren Hoffman (women’s 400-meter) and medal hopeful EJ Obiena, the world's No. 2 ranked men’s pole vaulter.
“Being there in the Olympics is surreal,” he admitted.
And why wouldn’t it be?
A robotics major who grew up in the Basque region of San Sebastian in Spain, Tolentino and Hoffman were among the last Filipino athletes to qualify in the Paris Games.
He did so by ending up ranked No. 29 out of the 40 qualifiers on the deadline of the Olympic rankings last June 30. A victory in the Spanish Club Championships enabled him to boost his rankings and earn a berth in Paris.
Cabang scored his first major victory in hurdles by winning the gold in the 110-meter competition in Durango, Spain in 2017.
By that time, too, he was torn on whether to represent Spain or the Philippines in international meets, a decision which his mother had the final say.
“It was my mom who insisted that I go to the Philippines. So I did say to my coach that I will represent the Philippines,” said Cabang.
A virtual unknown when he first came to the country, Cabang participated in the weekly trials of the Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association (Patafa) as a walk-in and won the men’s 110-meter hurdles back in 2022.
That was the start of his career in Philippine athletics.
He first represented the country in the 32nd Southeast Asian Games in Cambodia where he bagged a bronze.
A few months after, Cabang saw action in the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China where he fell just short of a podium finish as he placed fourth in the men’s 110-meter hurdles with a time of 13.70.
But in February this year, he set a new Philippine record of 7.64 seconds in bagging a bronze medal in the 60-meter hurdles of the Asian Indoor Athletics Championships in Tehran, Iran.
By March, he made the semifinals of the same event in the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, Scotland with a clocking of 7.68 seconds.
Then in May, Cabang primed up for the Olympics by establishing a new 110-meter hurdles record of 13.37 seconds in winning the gold during the ICTSI Philippine Athletics Championships at the Philsports track and field oval.
In just a two-year span since coming over to the country, Cabang now has the word Olympian placed before his name and he can’t be happier.
He said, “I just couldn’t explain the feeling. Super happy, I guess,” he said.
Cabang along with his coach Martin Dela Fuente and Hoffman are now in Metz, France to train for their respective events.
He will be seeing action in the 110-meter hurdles heat on August 4.
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