Next Stop: 2020 Tokyo Olympics
For stashing away with the overall championship in the just-held Southeast Asian Games, the Philippines has, one more time, shed off the tag as the region’s “Sick Man” in sports.
That was the second time since the country sent off its first athletic contingent in the biennial conclave in 42 years, or 14 years from the time the Filipino athletes won the overall gonfalon in 2005.
After that 23rd edition of the Games in 2005, the Philippines plunged anew into oblivion ending up to as low as seventh place at one time.
Such an ignominy, according to Philippine Olympic Committee President, Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino , should already be a thing of the past and should completely be forgotten.
Tolentino, head of the local cycling federation, has called on all his colleagues in the Philippine sports hierarchy to map out the needed programs with the end in view of ending the country’s long, 95-year hunger for a gold medal in the quadrennial meet, also known as the “Greatest Sports Show on Earth.”
Let’s not rest on our laurels,” Tolentino stressed. “Let our impressive showing in the SEA Games be the start of our ultimate goal of gifting the county its first Olympic gold medal.”
But that’s easier said than done,” Tolentino admitted. “First, there is this Olympic qualifying competitions for our athletes to earn their place in Tokyo,” Tolentino confided in last Saturday’s Scoop On Air Forum at The Manila Times TV.
“We already have two of our own who officially earned their tickets to Tokyo,” the Cavite lawmaker said in reference to Filipino pole vaulter Ernest John Obiena in athletics and gymnast Carlos Edriel Yulo.
“We still need some more to join Obiena and Yulo and I believe, with the way our athletes beat the hell of the opposition in the last SEA Games, we still have a few more who are capable of make it,” he assured.
“But, as I said, madaling sabihin ‘yan,” Tolentino quipped during the forum organized by the Sports Communicators Organization of the Philippines in coordination with The Manila Times Publications. “The talents are there, nakita na natin sa SEA Games.”
“What our athletes need are preparations, right kind of preparations, which, as we found out in the two times we won the overall championships, are the winning formula for our athletes to attain success, “ he remarked.
The government, Tolentino also said, is there (to help) through the Philippine Sports Commission, but as in all and every national undertaking, a little more push to be provided by the private sector.
Tolentino looks at athletics, boxing, taekwondo weightlifting and other martial arts sports as potential sources of Olympic medals for the country.
“I would just like to remind everybody that two of our three silver medals and three bronze medals, so far won in the Olympics came from boxing, “ Tolentino recalled in reference to Anthony Villanueva’s and Mansue“Onyok” Velasco’s second place finishes and third place wind ups of Jose “Cely” Villanueva, Anthony’s father, Leopoldo Serrantes and Roel Velasco.
Weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz was the lasts to hand the Philippines its third silver, which she did in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.
“And remember, too, that Anthony Villanueva’s silver was won in Tokyo in 1964,” the POC top honcho attested.
Besides Cely, Serrantes and Roel, other bronze-medal finishes the Filipino athletes won in the every four-year competitions were fashioned by Teofilo Yldefonso in swimming (twice); and Simeon Toribio and Miguel White in athletics.
Pintoppler Ariane Cerdena had actually romped off with the gold medal in bowling when it was played as demonstration event in the 1988 Games in Seoul.
Filipino jins Stephen Fernandez and ex-gymnast Bea Lucero, likewise, brought home a bronze each in the 1992 Barcelona Games when taekwondo was held as a demo sports. EDDIE G. ALINEA