Two months after losing his father to liver cancer, 19-year-old Albert Ian Delos Santos stepped onto the competition floor in Egypt — injured, exhausted, and carrying a grief he had not yet fully processed — and lifted more than any junior weightlifter in his category ever had.
The Zamboanga native broke his own clean and jerk world record in the 71-kilogram division, hoisting 187 kilograms at the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) event, surpassing the 185-kilogram mark he had set just months earlier at the 2025 IWF World Weightlifting Championships in Forde, Norway.
The road to Egypt was not clean. Delos Santos admitted that grief had pushed him beyond what his training plan allowed, leaving him with a back injury so severe he could barely walk.
“I deviated from my coach’s percentages in training and wanted to do every lift for my dad. It was my way of trying to get over the pain,” he told the IWF. “I wore myself out, and two Saturdays ago I injured my back.”
“I couldn’t even walk for a couple of days. I felt so bad, I was in a deep void. I had only a week to train for this and I was trembling out there, but my dad was with me all the way. This was for him,” he added.
When the session ended, he sprinted to his mother Diwa, who had brought a photograph of his late father. He kissed it, repeating: “I did it for him! I did it for him!”
The Egypt competition marks Delos Santos’ first senior-level event. His debut at the Norway world championships last October — where he set the original record — came with its own moment of candor. He had publicly stated beforehand that he intended to set a world record, a claim he acknowledged could have come across as arrogant.
“Promising to get a world record makes me sound cocky, which I’m not, but that was pretty special. My big target here was making the top ten and hitting that 185,” he said. “There’s plenty more improvement in me… But things are going well. Now I have to go straight into preparing for the next big competition, the South East Asia Games in Thailand in two months.”
He finished eighth overall in Norway, making good on both targets.
Delos Santos is among a string of young Filipino athletes who have delivered milestone performances in international competition in recent months. Tennis player Alex Eala became the first Filipino to claim a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) title after defeating Hungary’s Panna Udvardy at the Guadalajara 125 Open, winning 1-6, 7-5, 6-3. She had earlier become the first Filipina to win a Grand Slam main draw match, rallying past world number 14 Clara Tauson of Denmark. Eala also took gold at the Southeast Asian Games in December.
Chess grandmaster Janelle Mae Frayna added her own entry to that list, becoming the first Filipina to win an international women’s chess crown with an undefeated run of seven wins and two draws. Triathlete Kira Ellis, like Delos Santos, is now preparing for the upcoming SEA Games in Thailand after claiming gold in the Women’s Junior Division at the 2025 European Triathlon Junior Cup in Riga, Latvia.
