Daniel Coakley: Hitting gold on his SEA Games debut

A once-in-a-lifetime race where everything fell into place. That was how a Philippine delegation report on Tuesday described feat Daniel Coakley achieved at the 24th Southeast Asian Games. On Monday, Coakley was one of the Filipino swimmers who stamped their class at His Majesty the King's 80th Birthday Anniversary Aquatic Center in Nakhon Ratchasima in Thailand. Consider the long list of feats that that the 6-foot-1 Coakley, born of a Hawaiian father and a Filipino mother, accomplished three days short of his 18th birthday on Dec. 13: • He erased the two-year-old men's national 50-meter freestyle mark of 23.76 seconds set by Ronald Guiriba not once but twice on the same day with eye-popping times of 23.08 and 22.8. • He earned a trip to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games with those times after meeting the Class B qualifying mark of 23.13 to join the elite ranks of teammates Miguel Molina, Ryan Arabejo, an d Jamie Walsh who are also going to China next year. • He won his first gold swimming with the national team and on his SEA Games debut. And that's not all. What is truly phenomenal is the fact the tall, lean and chinky-eyed Fil-Am was vying in his one and only individual event in the entire competitions. "What Daniel did was awesome. That was all pure talent," head coach Pinky Brosas, a 1972 Munich Olympics veteran, said. To put it in proper perspective, Brosas noted that Coakley's winning time was the eighth-best clocking in the finals of the 2000 Sydney Olympics – meaning that his performance is world class. "Even coach Jake Poppel fell off his seat when he saw what Daniel did," Brosas said, referring to the American swmming coach of the Arkansas University Razorbacks who also handles Arabejo at Bolls High School. "I'm simply overjoyed. That's all I can say," Coakley said, in a short interview at the Athletes' Village mess hall late Monday after his impressive showing. A virtual unknown until that fateful night, Coakley has an impeccable swimming pedigree, being the great grandson of the late Olympic bronze medalist Teofilo Ildefonso. Moreover, Coakley, a recent Kealakehe High School graduate, continues to own the Hawaiian age-group freestyle records in the 9-10, 11-12, and 13-14-year-old brackets. Brosas disclosed that he and swimming chief Mark Joseph earlier debated on whether to include Coakley in the lineup since he was swimming in only one event. "In the end, I prevailed because I believe in this guy," Brosas said. And the rest, as they say, is Philippine and SEA Games swimming history. - GMANews.TV