ALEAH Finnegan won’t be the only Fil-Am gymnast competing in the Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships on June 12 to 18 at the OCBC Arena in Singapore, where a spot in the World Championships will be up for grabs.
UCLA Bruins standout Emma Malabuyo, an alternate on the US Olympic team to the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, will also join the national women’s artistic gymnastics squad in the Asian competition that serves as a qualifying event for the World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium in September.
The World meet serves as the main qualifier for the Paris Summer Games next year.
GAP deputy secretary general Rowena Bautista confirmed that Malabuyo will be a member of the national team for the Asian championships.
“I’m really excited to compete for them (the Philippines),” Malabuyo, 20, told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview over the weekend. “I’m full Filipino (and) just excited to represent my family. I want to make my grandparents proud.”
Born to Joel and Ana Malabuyo, the gymnast revealed in the piece that she was approached by American gymnastics coach Cliff Parks, head of the Leading Edge Gymnastics Academy who recently conducted a workshop in the country, about representing the Philippines.
“I was actually approached with this idea by Cliff Parks, who works with the Filipino national team,” said Malabuyo. “At first, I was like, ‘I think I’m done with elite.’ Then I started really thinking about it, and I was like, ‘I’m playing in the gym, I can still do these difficult skills. Like, why not?’”
A five-time US national team member, Malabuyo finished eighth on the uneven bars and ninth all-around at the 2021 US Olympic Team Trials.
She was fourth all-around, sixth on the balance beam and seventh on the bars and floor exercise at the 2021 US Championships, where her day two beam score of 14.60 was the third-highest in the competition.
Finnegan was a member of the US women’s national gymnastics team from 2019—21 and was part of the team that won a gold medal in the 2019 Pan American Games.
Malabuyo said returning to elite gymnastics had been “circling in her mind since finishing her freshman season a year ago at the University of California, Los Angeles. But competing for the Philippines, where her grandparents hail, did not start to take shape until a week after the NCAA championships last April.”
Right now, she is focused on securing a Filipino passport with the help of Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carrion while fine-tuning her skills on the women’s balance beam and floor exercise.
“I just want to go out there and show some beautiful, clean gymnastics,” Malabuyo stressed. “So, I’m basically doing my college routines. On floor, still keeping the same tumbling passes, just adding in my leaps and turns that are more difficult.
“And then, from there, I want to be able to add on later. Same with (the) beam, just keeping my same basic skills, just adding a few combinations.”
Should she perform well in the Lion City, Malabuyo hopes to add more events for the World Championships and did not rule out going all out to qualify for the Paris Olympics.
“I have always wanted to compete at a World Championships, and I would always get injured right before, so that was definitely hard for me, and I love competing internationally,” said Malabuyo. “So, I think the goal is hopefully to qualify for the World Championships, and then, maybe from there, possibly competing in the Olympics would be a dream.”
