PH team should be overhauled 

By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.

THE TWO top honchos of sports in the country, Philippine Olympic Committee president Jose “Peping” Cojuangco and Philippine Sports Commission chairman Richie Garcia, bragged and made a rosy forecast that our national athletes will win at least 70 gold medals in the 26th Southeast Asia (SEA) Games. The result was dismal, having achieved only one-half of their projection, with our national team delivering only 36 gold to land sixth place out of 11 countries in the just concluded SEA Games held in Indonesia.
We merely retained our sixth place finish two years ago in Vientiane, Laos but failed to match the 41 gold we garnered then. It hurts to say that our performance this time was the worst since we entered the biennial meet in 1977. The poor performance of our athletes is a clear indication that there’s really something wrong bigtime in our national sports development, a fast downhill run, after being the overall champion in 2005. And if our national sports leaders will not recover from this debacle, I believe we might wake up again fully slumped two years from now and might even be dislodged by a small country like Myanmar (Burma), which is hosting the games in 2013. Myanmar finished seventh overall in the medal tally.

Philippines is the second most populated nation (next to Indonesia) in Southeast Asia with 98 million citizens, but we are being badly beaten in the field of sports by smaller countries, particularly Singapore which is just a city-state with only a five million population. A country like the Philippines is supposed to have lots of good athletes in supply because of its big population, a similar equation applied to China. China utilizes its huge human resources in good use by creating a university of sports in its provinces, hiring world-renowned coaches and selecting their best, sending them abroad to gain much experience. China’s policy is already bearing fruits, now the world power in sports, dislodging the United States in the 2008 Olympic Games. They are now heavily favored to retain their supremacy in the coming 2012 London Olympics. They also dominate in every Asian Games.

Leadership squabble, palakasan system and corruption inside the federation I believe are the three big factors contributing to our downhill drive in sports development. Except for the federation of boxing and taekwondo that harvest four gold each for the country, associations in swimming, badminton, cycling, canoeing and softball, to name some, are constantly embroiled in some petty politics that is demoralizing the athletes. Their poor performance in international meets speaks for itself. It’s high time the leaders of these associations are not re-elected next year. There must be a total overhaul from top to bottom in these organizations, including qualifcation of athletes. We should stop politicking and bickering and instead start training the young athletes and stop the practice of sending the aging ones to international tilts. We should also have a grassroots program that begin at the barangay level like what is being done in China. Remember, we have not discovered our Olympic gold medalist and continue to lag behind Hong Kong and Singapore.  We are deteriorating instead of moving up. So let us join the clamor to overhaul our sports associations.

P.S. My congratulations to cyclist Alfie Catalan for winning the gold medal in the individual pursuit velodrome race in the SEA Games. Catalan, 29, is from barangay Cabacaraan in San Manuel. Hopefully the Sangguniang Panlalawigan will give this young fellow from the province’s 6th District a ‘recognition award’. Catalan also won the gold in the same event during the 2005 and 2007 SEA Games.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK: And Jesus Christ said “Watch therefore, for you do not know when your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” MATTHEW 24: 42-44

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