Don’t cry for me Asian Games

By Al S. Mendoza

IF YOU ARE still sad over our gruesome performance in the Asian Games, quit the crap.

You are just wasting your time, if not unnecessarily taxing your tear ducts.

I don’t even call it a poor performance.

I call it an expected performance.

We can never perform brilliantly in the Asian Games in the context of the overall scope of the conclave.  We can only shine in one, two or even three disciplines. Boxing is one.  Billiards is another.

Overall, we can never outperform the field. We are not mean for the Asian Games – only in parts of it.

The Asiad is for China, Japan and South Korea – all First World countries.
 

What’s cut for us is the SEA Games, that gathering of South East Asian nations. That’s why we easily defeated our neighbors during the last SEA Games held in the country.

We didn’t only have the luxury of home court advantage then, we also had a boisterous hometown crowd passionately cheering us on to perform beyond the limits of human endurance.

In the Asian Games, no amount of fighting spirit, even deathly spunk, can spur us on to score big in many of the 42 disciplines contested in the two-week affair.

We just didn’t have it, period.

We are Third World.  And being Third World means we are poor. 

Sports, especially of the magnitude of the Asian Games, are megabuck business, a multi-billion peso endeavor meant only for First World countries.

China has scooped up nearly half of the 423 gold medals staked in Doha, the premiere city of Qatar.  Don’t be surprised one bit.  Fifty-seven years after Mao Zedong and his Communist party swept to power, China, the world’s sleeping giant, has woken up.

For China, the just-concluded Asian Games was but the springboard to bigger sporting conquest.

Wait till it finally flexes its muscle in the Olympic Games set in Beijing in 2008.

As can be gauged in the last Olympiad in Athens in 2004, China gave the United States a close fight.  Come 2008, don’t be surprised if China finally emerges as the overall Olympic champion.

In Doha alone, China won nearly 160 gold medals. A far second with only 48 gold medals was South Korea, followed by Japan with 46.

We didn’t even win five medals in Doha. 

And Thailand, which we routed in the last SEA Games, garnered 10 gold medals to place sixth overall.

We were lucky we placed 17th among 35 competing nations in Doha.

So, stop bickering. Quit the teeth-gritting.

We should be happy no one in the 350-member Philippine delegation got injured or fell seriously ill in Doha.

You should know by now why we consistently finish below the overall standings. We hear it every time the Asiad ends: Lack of money.

The government has no money to train our athletes. Only First World countries have the moolah for sports.

We have the right formula for success. What we don’t have is the money to finance that formula for success.

But poor that we are, and being Third World that we really are, we go to the Asian Games in pursuit of the brotherhood of man, and in observance of goodwill among nations through sports.

That’s all there is to it.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/general-admission/)

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