In this December 2023 photo, Regine Tugade, right, wins the women’s 100 meters at the GTFA National Championships. Tugade, on Friday, became Guam’s first-ever female Olympian to advance from a preliminary round.
HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Leading up to the 2024 Olympic Summer Games in Paris, France, Guam’s Regine Tugade’s preparation had been better than ever, and the three-time Olympian was ready to test her speed against the world’s best athletes. Earlier in the summer, while competing in the women’s 100-meter race at the Micronesian Games in Majuro, Republic of the Marshall Islands, she broke her own national record and, once again, solidified herself as the fastest female athlete in the region.
With her training on-point and everything else in her athletic career operating at an optimum level, the 26-year-old former U.S. Navy officer and former record-setting member of the U.S. Naval Academy’s women’s track and field team did something Friday that no other Guam female athlete had ever accomplished at an Olympic Games — she advanced out of a preliminary round. In Tugade’s historic race, where she competed against eight other elite runners at the Stade de France, the Guamanian finished the race in 12.02 seconds, which landed the speedster in fourth place. Although she hadn’t placed high enough to advance on placement, her barely over 12 seconds time turned into a historic result.
In heat No. 2 of the preliminary found, Tugade bested runners from Georgia, Pakistan, Oman, American Samoa, and the United Arab Emirates, but trailed the top three runners who hailed from Vietnam, Grenada, and Taipei.
About an hour after Tugade’s race, she and eight of her peers lined up at the starting blocks and competed in Round 1, Heat 8.
Although Tugade placed eighth in the heat, she posted an impressive 11.87 — a mere 0.11 off the pace of her national record.
With Tugade’s third Olympics recently passed, she set the bar for Team Guam. In Team Guam’s first two attempts in Paris — Maria Escano in judo and Manami Iijima-Martin in triathlon — the Guamanians’ efforts were less than stellar. In Escano’s attempt, where she competed in the round of 32, she lost 10-0 to Guinea’s Mariana Esteves. In Iijima-Martin’s only try in triathlon, the region’s most accomplished triathlete crashed her bike on the slick cobblestones and did not finish.
But now with Tugade’s historic performance in the 100-meter race, which was Team Guam’s third attempt in the Olympic Games, she became the first female and third member of Team Guam to have won a heat, round or match at an Olympic games. Previously, Ricardo “Little Mountain” Blas Jr. had won a round in judo at the 2012 London Summer Games. And, four years before Blas’ brilliant effort, at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, Sean Pangelinan advanced to the semifinals in 500-meter canoe.
With Escano’s, Iijima-Martin’s and Tugade’s Paris Games in the record books, five members from Team Guam await competition. In the coming days, Joseph Green will compete in the men’s 100-meter race, Nicola Lagatao, a weightlifter, will test her might against the best in the world, Raina Taitingfong will participate in canoe sprint, and wrestlers Mia-Lahnee Aquino and Rckaela Aquino will grapple and roll into action.
