Sports Eye
Humbled in our own turf
By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.
THE four-day 2011 Le Tour de Filipinas concluded last Tuesday and I was there as one of the consultants of the event’s chief organizer Gary Cayton. It was done successfully and I believe it was prepared better and made more colorful than last year. Baguio City as the grand finish venue was a perfect site. Before the groundwork of this year’s event, I told Mr. Cayton that if possible the grand finish should be staged in Baguio City, explaining to him that a multistage bicycle race without a big mountain climb (unlike last year) is not a complete bicycle race, especially if it’s an international race. He took my advice. I also thought that a Baguio City stage would be a plus factor for our Filipino riders to win the race because of their familiarity with the terrain, especially our Pangasinan riders who have easy to this mountainous place.
But I was very wrong. It turned out to be the opposite. The foreign riders, especially the Iranians, were physically and mentally superior in conquering the treacherous Kennon Road, coming in a 1-2-3-4-5-6 finish which stunned and shocked the spectators (including this writer) at Burnham Park. It was really disappointing that despite our accessibility and familiarity with the Baguio climb, our riders who were the favorites to win the day were so humiliated in our own turf, and the best that a Filipino could do was a seventh finish courtesy of Lucien Llyod Reynante, a former national team member and the son of three-time Tour champion, the legendary Manuel Reynante, three minutes 31 seconds behind.
From Day One up to Day Four, I keenly observed how the 75 participants pushed the pedals of their bikes in short and long courses, in windy and humid weather, in flat and in mountainous terrain, especially the foreigners whom I first met in the flesh last year. It was really frustrating to see how our countrymen were humbled and clobbered, a far cry from their performance last year when Reynante and local boy Baler Ravina of Asingan landed second and third, respectively, in the overall classification. Well, I know our boys did their utmost best, but their best was just not good enough against the aliens.
I was broken-hearted after the finish and tried to analyze what happened to our Filipino riders. Here’s how I saw it:
Except for the 7-Eleven team, our national or local bets lacked international exposures unlike these foreigners who conquered us. I heard that most of these cyclists are being supported by their own government.
We don’t stage enough national and local races that could sharpen the skills of our boys to prepare them for future bigger races like the Le Tour de Filipinas.
Our local or even our national government units are tight-fisted in providing support to our boys except for participation in Southeast Asian Games and Asian Games.
Maybe we have wrong training methods and need an expert in cycling from abroad to conduct a seminar for us.
The last but not the least and perhaps the biggest reason of all, we have many chiefs in national cycling who are frequently feuding with each other all for personal power and prestige. This is very demoralizing to our cyclists and the cycling patrons.
Manuel Reynante defeated all the Asian riders during the five-day 1965 Asian Tour of Luzon and I defeated the two-time Asian champion Sutiyono (I forgot his first name) of Indonesia during the 8-day 1977 Tour of PICCA (Philippine Industrial Commercial Cycling Association). But now I’m wondering why our compatriots cannot beat their foreign counterparts, or at least land in the top three positions like what happened last year. They have all the reason to win because this is our turf and they are supposed to be very familiar with our terrain than the visiting cyclists. To land outside of the top five is very bad. The foreigners came, conquered, dominated and humiliated us in our own territory. What a shame.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, “Look, He is calling for Elijah!” Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.” And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last. Mark 15: 33-37.
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