This just got personal.
Olympic gold medalist Joseph Schooling defended his childhood nanny, Yolanda Pascual, from bashers in Singapore who accuse the 56-year-old Filipina of trying to ride on her ward’s popularity.
The criticisms came after a 2015 advertisement for a telecommunications company that highlighted the bond between Schooling and his “Aunty” Yolly, who started taking care of him since he was a year old, resurfaced on social media after the Singaporean’s victory.
The Straits Times, the leading newspaper in Singapore, also published a thoughtful article about the two, noting that “very few would have witnessed the boy-to-man story of Singapore’s Olympic champion from diapers to the Mizuno trunks who went prospecting in Rio de Janeiro and struck gold.”
Talking to Soho, Schooling said that “it’s disappointing hearing all these accusations of her trying to ride me and trying to use my success, you know, to increase her popularity,” the 21-year-old said in a live interview with Jessica Soho on GMA 7’s State of the Nation.
“I think whoever said that should be shot. That’s stupid. That really pissed me off. That’s not true at all.”
Watch the video above.
