UNDERLINING how she could be a huge asset to the Philippine athletics team, Fil-Am runner Victoria Bossong ran a personal best of two minutes and .79 seconds over the weekend, finishing fourth in a close and thrilling women’s 800-meter race at the John Butcher Terrier Classic in Boston.
Running in a difficult lane, Bossong, 21, narrowly missed a podium finish, crossing the finish line .12 seconds VNTC’s Aurora Rynda while Brigham Young University’s Meghan Hunter (2:00.21) and North Carolina’s Makayla Paige (2:00.57) finished first and second, respectively.
The comely Harvard University varsity ace, who has been actively applying for Filipino citizenship to compete for the country in international play, surpassed her previous personal best of 2:00.92 set in the Pepsi Florida Relays in March last year while booking a new Crimson record in the event.
“We talked to Victoria just the other night and she remains steadfast in her desire to represent the Philippines in overseas meets,” noted Filam Sports founder Bo Navarro of the Ivy League school track standout, who is taking up BS Neuroscience and aspires to be a doctor.
Bosssong’s dentist mom, Annie Atienza Bossong, was born a Filipino and is a native of Puerto Galera, Misamis Oriental.
“We talked to Victoria’s coaches last week and they tell us that at the rate she is progressing, she is bound to get faster and go below two minutes sooner than expected,” added Navarro, who has also been assisting the Bossongs in securing the athlete’s Philippine passport.
“Her (Victoria’s) fervent desire is that when she runs again in the National Open (the ICTSI Philippine Athletics Championships) in May, she will be racing as a Filipino in front of her compatriots,” he added. “Nothing could make her happier than this.”
Given her age, the athlete has the potential to be one of the country’s track and field standard bearers in the years to come, similar to the late sprint legend Lydia de Vega, a back-to-back Asian Games gold medalist, whose career began to flourish in her early twenties.
Her present time in the 800-meter run is currently No. 3 best in the US and second-fastest in Ivy League history, on top of being a heartbeat away from the qualifying standard of 1:59.00 for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan in September, according to Navarro.
Her clocking would have easily made her the runaway champion in the 2021 Vietnam and 2023 Cambodia Southeast Asian Games.
Hometown bet Thi Hu Han Nguyen ruled the event at 2:08.93 in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi three years ago while a Singaporean runner took the mint in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh at 2:09.15 in 2023.
Bossong’s time is also superior to the gold-medal winning time of 2:01.81 by China’s Wang Chunyu in the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games as well as the 2:03.20 of Sri Lanka’s Tharushi Karunatha in the 20th Asiad in Hangzhou, China two years ago.
Had she been racing under the Philippine flag, the old national record in the women’s 800-meter event of 2:06.75 set by Fil-Am Jessica Barnard at the 2016 Portland Track Festival would be history by now.