Elma Muros-Posadas

JUST A THOUGHT: I am always doing that which I cannot in order that I may learn how to do it. – Pablo Picasso

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SURVIVOR ELMA: Caught up with Asia’s Fastest Woman Elma Muros-Posadas during a star-studded Kapuso mall show over the weekend in Cagayan de Oro in line with the golden city’s celebration of its yearly Kagay-an Festival.

What’s a prized athlete like Elma doing in a mall show, of all things, you might ask.

She was part of a GMA supershow which presented six of the 18 castaways featured in the third edition of “Survivor Philippines,” which premiered Monday night on the network. The five other contenders were actor Ahron Villena, comedian Pretty Tizha, contravida Karen de los Reyes, Buhawi Meneses, and reality star Ian Batherson.

Elma spoke of the most amazing, most engaging stories while filming “Survivor” in an almost abandoned chain of islands in Thailand.

“My experience in ‘Survivor’ tops everything I experienced in sports in terms of hardship,” she told us in Filipino. The different challenges were hard, but just as hard were the lack of good living conditions, food, and the abundance of threats to life and beauty.

She said she initially dismissed network’s invitation casting her as one of the castaways, but her 18-year-old daughter, Clarice, herself a budding athlete, prevailed upon her to give it a shot.

Elma, who considers herself retired from active sports but continues to join international races now and then, says she had to ask permission from her boss at Brent School in Laguna, where she has been an athletic coach for the past nine years. The fastest woman in Asia also doubles as coach at the Philippine Sports Commission.

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LOVE OF COUNTRY: Since retiring from athletics, Elma has lived a quiet life as coach, a married woman with two children. She admits to missing those times when the entire country adored her as a track superstar but is quite content with her life as a wife and mother.

Elma refuses to be quoted about how government support has been so lacking in sports, especially in the field of athletics. Her daughter, Clarice, has been showing great promise as a track star herself at Brent School where she’s in high school, but Elma isn’t inclined to encourage her to go into sports full-time.

Years ago, when she declared she was done with running, Elma was entertaining a job offer as coach in the United States. She was looking for something concrete to hang on to upon her retirement.

Elma also found inspiration from fellow superstar-athlete Lydia de Vega, who has gone to Singapore to work as a coach in a big university there. Lydia, in fact, has been Singapore-based for six years.

In the end, love of family and country prevailed. Elma said she couldn’t bear being separated from her children that she passed up the chance to work in the US. It was then that Brent School hired her.

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CROSSING OVER: Richard Gutierrez is making good his crossover to News and Public Affairs by giving his 100 percent attention to “Survivor Philippines.”

At the thanksgiving party hosted by GMA Films for the success of “In Your Eyes,” the actor said that despite the obvious hardship he faced while filming, he wouldn’t mind hosting the next edition of SP. The actor flew to Thailand armed with a cache of ammunitions, mosquito repellant lotions included.

All 18 castaways complained of impossible living conditions on the three islands where they shot. They faced threats from not just mosquitoes but also snakes, iguanas, other reptiles, cockroaches, and those tiny ubiquitous insects known locally as niknik.

Elma Muros showed us her feet and legs still fresh with insect bites. Ian Batherson thought he had been downed by dengue upon coming home. He had high fever and was vomiting, signs of possible dengue.

Richard considers himself lucky he made it through those 42 days unscathed. After taking a few days off, he’s set to start a round of meetings with his bosses in Entertainment for his next teleserye, another take on “Captain Barbell!”

(nescuar@yahoo.com)