By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
The 19th Asian Games concluded last Oct 8, 2023 in Hangzhou, China. Do you know how many gold medals were harvested by Philippine athletes?
If you say 4 gold medals, then you and I saw the same number as per official medal tally from the Games organizing committee. Maybe we are correct?
Wait, according to our Philippine Olympic Committee president, Bambol Tolentino, we won 1,003 gold medals- more than double the total, combined gold medals won 30 Asian countries that competed! Absurd.
I tried to identify Cordillera athletes from the results of the various events who won such huge haul of gold and I didn’t see any. In fact, there were only four gold medals really-two from jiu-jitsu, one from pole vault, and one from men’s basketball. I saw a Cordilleran though, garnering a bronze in taekwondo. He is Jones Inso, an Adamson university student, and our kababayan from La Trinidad, Benguet. His medal was the second of any color won by the RP contingent in the Games. Congratulations to him.
Ah yes, basketball. That’s where we got 1000 golds, according to Tolentino.
The four golds were the minimum target harvest of the Philippine contingent to the Games. And basketball was not even expected to get one because it’s final composition was not even known one week before the actual official opening of the Games. It was a nerve-wracking, horrific time.
The POC president even strongly stated that they will seek the approval of the desired players from the organizing committee until the deadline of submission of final roster, which was two days before the actual games commenced. Horror of horrors, they insisted on that even if the guidelines which the participating countries including Philippines approved much earlier, clearly stated that the selected players (four of them) were not qualified. They wanted to bend the rules. Last minute desperation on our part. It’s an embarrassing, pathetic move.
Surprise of surprises, our basketball team won the gold after going thru two cardiac games. First, they won against Iran in the quarterfinals, then defeated China in the semi-finals. In both games, they won by one big point in the last seconds of the game. They squeaked past Iran after squandering a big 21-point lead.
Iran mercifully fell short of a giant reversal which could have resulted in a tsunami of emotional low for Gilas, the RP team. The Iranian coach wailed that Gilas used at least 3 naturalized players (only 2 actually). It is unfair according to him for teams to carry multiple naturalized players while teams like Iran, don’t have any. The rules say that any one can play in the Games provided they have a bonafide passport of the country they are representing. And this applies to any event.
In the match up with China, Gilas never tasted the lead until the last seconds when our naturalized player, Justin Brownlee, coolly heaved and sunk a three-pointer in front of Chinese defenders. He erased China’s two-point lead and stunned everyone in the arena, especially the Chinese players and basketball officials. There was deathly silence as well from the raucous Chinese fans in the stands. Yao Ming, the NBA legend and president of the Chinese basketball federation, castigated the Chinese players as “slackers”-whatever that means.
With that backdrop, the POC president may have felt justified in saying that the basketball gold is worth a thousand gold. That thought is also bolstered by the fact that basketball is our national past time. Every one is into it. It boils down to the distorted idea that winning the gold in basketball is all that matters. Never mind if we don’t get the same mint in other sports.
Our measly four gold medals is symptomatic of the chaotic sports scene in the country; also of lack of unity, lack of foresight, lack of proper planning in the grass roots level, lack of honest desire and sincerity to improve our performance in international sports.
Squabbling among our sports leaders is the norm, especially when active or wanting to become active again politicians, are involved. Take for example the current Philippine Olympic Committee (POC}-Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) “misunderstanding”.
Just after the close of the 19th Asian Games, the POC thru its president, is accusing the PSC, chaired by Mr. Richard Bachmann, of trying to derail the performance of the country in the just concluded Games. He divulged in the media, instead of quietly seeking an audience to clarify things, that PSC insensitively sent a memorandum to the POC to settle an unsettled cash advance by POC before the opening of the Games. POC felt it is “distractive and malicious”.
I think that’s akin to a classic childish reaction. I must agree though that it would have been more sensible for the concerned communication to have been delivered after the Games.
For his part, Bachmann explained that the liquidation report came from the Commission On Audit, that the year concerned was long before he assumed the chairmanship of the PSC and that he had no knowledge of the communication. So, he asked for discussion on the matter among the COA, POC and PSC. No dice, according to Tolentino not believing some of the assertions of Bachmann. All the while, the media is feasting on this melodrama. Silly.
Nobody is winning here, but there is a sure loser: the local sporting world.
If our sports leaders think and act like grade schoolers, we can never see the rise of our international sports performance in the foreseeable future.
For the last six editions of the Games, starting 2002, we never got more than 4 four golds in each edition. In 2014, we even chalked up only 1 gold medal.
Looking at the performance of North Korea in the same Games, a country with less than half of our population, and is much poorer than us, it never amassed lower than 6 golds in each of the last 6 editions ; their norm is about 11-12 golds each time. Lack of finances is therefore not much of a contributor to our poor performance.
Instead of disputing, in public at that, it should be more circumspect for the officials to come up with a comprehensive program of developing our sports talents. Start by identifying young talents with potential using sports science, then sustain their development by convincing willing patrons, especially for financial help.
Misunderstandings among officials of our sports bodies, will result in debacles. While POC and PSC officials are seemingly at loggerheads, our World Cup-bound U15 women softballers are training on their own, without financial support from either of the sports bodies. It is the first time that we have qualified for the said WC, yet our leaders are leaving it to chance. Incomprehensible.
That’s the kind of sports leaders that we have. They will certainly be the first to have photo-op with the team if ever it wins.
They are the same officials who will try to coat their failure by claiming that bronze shines like gold in SEA Games competitions and certainly say that a single basketball gold is worth a thousand gold medals. Shame.**
