She was just 5 feet 2 inches on her bare toes, but on the cinder track, INOCENCIA S, SOLIS stood taller, stronger, faster on her feet. Throughout the postwar years, she was a stand-out track star, specializing in the sprints, relays, and even broad jump. In all her Philippine representations in 3 consecutive Asiads, she came home with medals in all 3 colors. So formidable was she, that her records endured for years, taking over a decade for emerging athletes to break her sprint clockings.
Born on Holy Innocents Day (28 Dec. 1932) to Victorio Solis and Leonarda Silomenio, Inocencia grew up with a farming family that valued hard work. She was a product of local schools—New Lucena Elementary School and Santa Barbara High School—where she was exposed to athletics, while dreaming of becoming a teacher someday.
At the 1950 National Inter-Scholastic Athletic Association Meet (NISSA), Solis, coached by Apolonio Japitana, came home with 3 Golds in record times in the 100 m., 200 m. dash, and the running broad jump event. The 18 year old teener’s rise to athletic prominence had just begun.
Cebu Institute of Technology, which has a powerhouse roster of nationally-ranked student athletes, took an interest on Solis and offered her a college scholarship. She accepted and began her Elementary Education course, while she began her athletic training under new coach Fructuosa Soriano.
In the next few years, Solis began stamping her class in elite athletic meets like the PRISAA Meet and the National Open in 1953. She proved her worth when she qualified to be part of the national team for the second Asian Games to be held in the Manila capital, Philippines from May 2-5, 1954.
She served notice of her potential when she became one of only two female Filipina athletes to win a medal for an individual event, scoring a Bronze in the 200 m. dash (26.5 sec., new PH record)) after 2 Japanese (Midori Tanaka and Atsuko Nambu, Gold and Silver respectively). (Incidentally the other Filipina individual Bronze winner was her Cebu schoolmate, Vivencia Subido in Javelin). Solis also earned a Team Bronze with Rogelia Ferrer, Manolita Cinco and Roberta Anore (50.4 secs.)
Solis continued to make news in the local athletics scene with the holding of the National Open Championship in athletics in 1957. There, as a top member of the crack CIT team, she swept competition away in the sprints, winning Gold in the 100 and 200 m. dashes, with clockings of 12.4 and 27 secs. flat, respectively. Then, she teamed up with Visitacion Badana, Lucrecia Casorla and Francica Sañopal to win the 4x100 m. relay race in a new record of 49.6 seconds---the first time that Filipinas broke the 50 sec. barrier for that event, and of only 2 track events broken in the meet.
As a tune-up to the Asian Games of 1958, Solis bannered the CIT team at the 1958 National Open Track & Field Championship held at the Rizal track-and-football stadium in Manila. The event was spiced by the presence of international entries like Nationalist China, Clark Air Force Base, the Fifth Air Force, and Tachikawa Air Base. Solis swept the 100 m. and 200 m. sprints, and snagged a Bronze in the 4 x 100 m. relay with teammamtes Visitacion Badana, Lucrecia Casorla , and Francisca Sanopal.
Fresh from her triumphs at the National Open, Solis went to the 3rd edition of the Asian Games in Tokyo brimming with extra-confidence, and it was there that she shone the brightest.At the finals of the 100 m at the National Stadium, Solis was unheralded, based on her poor showing in the qualifying heats. All eyes were on Sakura Fukuyama and Yuko Kobayashi of Japan, But she stunned the crowd when she hurtled off the blocks and crossed the finish line first—in 12.5 seconds, a new Games Record, relegating the 2 Japanese to 2nd and 3rd.
Thus was Solis crowned Asia’s fastest in 1958. As a bonus, the quartet of Solis, Rogelia Ferrer, Irene Penuela and Francisca Sanopal nabbed the Silver in the 4 x100 m. relay. The Philippine Sportswriters Association acclaimed her as 1958 Athlete of the Year.
Solis would return to her last Asian Games
in Jakarta, Indonesia on August 1962. By then, she was 30 years old, and
had given way to an emerging track star, the 19 year-old Mona Sulaiman.
The veteran Solis teamed up with Aida Molinos, Francisca Sanopal,
and Sulaiman to rule the 4 x 100 m. relay—contributing a precious Gold
to the Philippines’ medal harvest.
A little over a week after the Games, Solis, representing the Bureau of Public Schools Interscholastic Athletics Association (BPSIAA), established a new Philippine record in running Broad Jump at the National Open Championships on 12 March 1954, with a distance of 5.209 meters (17 ft. 1 1/8 inches)
She was also a dominant force in the tour of Formosa after the Asian Games, where she won 5 sprints and took 2 gold medals in the broad jump, a fitting punctuation to her incredible athletic journey.
Solis pursued a teaching and coaching career in Cebu in the late 50s, then moved to Manila in the 60s to work with the city government of Caloocan. She helped coach the women's athletic team to the 1970 Asiad in Bangkok. Nothing much was known about Inocencia Solis after that, but in 1998, her names surfaced when she was awarded by Pres. Fidel V. Ramos the 1998 Distinguished Filipino Woman Achiever in Sports Philippine Centennial Celebration.
On 4 November 2001, Solis passed away at the Iloilo Mission Hospital due to diabetes complications. She was 69 years old. In 2016, she was accorded the ultimate honor of being inducted to the Philippine Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
SOURCES:
1955 PROGRESS Magazine
Supplement
Athletics at the 1954
Asian Games, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1954_Asian_Games
Athletics at the 1958
Asian Games, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1958_Asian_Games
“Solis, former Asiad sprint queen, dies”, by Nerio C. Lujan, The Philippine Star, https://www.philstar.com/sports/2001/12/13/143437/solis-former-asiad-sprint-queen-dies
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