Glued to the games

By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.

I’VE been an avid follower of the Olympic Games since the 1960 when it was held in Rome.

That was the time the Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila and the former Cassius Clay became my sports heroes. I was amazed by these two athletes due to their awesome performance. Bikila, running barefooted, won gold in the marathon and eclipsed the Olympic and world records, while Clay, with extraordinary speed and accuracy in punching, punished all his opponents in a convincing fashion to be the king in the light heavyweight division. The two were the darlings of the media and the center of attraction for the duration of that memorable summer games.

Bikila duplicated the feat in the 1964 Tokyo Games while Clay turned pro and won the world heavyweight tiara thrice under his Muslim name Muhammad Ali. And the rest was history.

After that extravagant opening ceremony of the Beijing Games, for six days I closely followed the battles of super athletes starting August 9 when the hostilities commenced. And I’m rushing to finish this piece so I can go back to being glued again in my favorite chair for the rest of the day to watch the best athletes in the world competing with each other.

Unfortunately-as of this writing-our best in shooting, weightlifting, archery, swimming and boxing already bowed out early in their first matches and came home empty-handed.

Hopefully our remaining delegation, especially our teakwondo jins, will do better.

But honestly speaking, our nationals do not appear to be on the verge of bringing home any medal like what happened four years ago in Athens.

I hope I’m wrong.

What our contingent failed to achieve was the opposite in the case of the American great swimmer Michael Phelps, the new hero of this Olympics.

As of August 14, Phelps had already harvested an amazing five gold medals and is clearly on the road to win eight as he promised. He won six gold and one bronze in the Athens Games and is now officially the most bemedalled athlete in the world since the Olympics was born in 1896.

As for us, we have not been able to win the elusive gold yet since we joined the games in 1924.

Something is really wrong with our sports development and I believe our sports leaders who are now in Beijing watching the performances of our athletes know the big reason why.

Wrong training, lack of discipline, poor nutrition, lack of resources and international exposures, corruption by our sports leaders, and the palakasan sistema na nandyan pa rin na umiiral hanggang ngayon are but a few of the reasons.

When will we ever learn?

This should be the big question that ought to be answered by our sports honchos when they come back.

Let’s wait and see.

(Readers may reach columnist at biking.jess@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/sports-eye/
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