THE Philippines officially landed sixth at the close of the 26th Southeast Asian Games with no yield in 12 final events of paragliding on Tuesday.
With a total of 36 gold, 56 silver and 77 bronze medals in the final tally, the Filipinos relinquished their fifth-place finish two years ago in Laos to swimming king Singapore, which had 42-45-73, 18 gold medals coming from the pool.
Host Indonesia handily took 182 of the 552 gold medals awarded to emerge overall champ but missed the gold that mattered most to them, losing to defending men’s football champion Malaysia, 4-5, in a dramatic, tension-filled penalty shootout witnessed by a filled-to-the rafters 80,000-seat Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta. Indonesia also had 151 silver and 152 bronze medals.
Thailand, distant second, with 75 gold medals less than Indonesia, had 100 silver and 120 bronze medals while Vietnam, runner-up for about a week, finished third with 96-90-100.
Perhaps the biggest Games winner for keeping the one gold everybody else wants, Malaysia rushed to fourth with 59-50-81.
Rounding out the field are 2013 SEAG host Myanmar (16-27-36), Lao-PDR (9-12-36), Cambodia (4-11-24), Timor Leste (1-1-6) and Brunei Darussalam (0-4-7).
“My personal expectation was about 50 to 55 gold medals. There were some close calls in our silver medals that could have improved our production. In the case of my association, tennis, I feel that we should have come up with two more gold medals but we fell short. This is also the case in a number of associations,” assessed deputy chief of mission Romeo Magat. Tennis won one gold, two silver and three bronze medals.
Of the total 39 sports disciplines where the Philippines took part in, taekwondo unseated athletics as best quality medal producer with 4-3-5, boxing second with 4-1-1 and billiards/snooker with 3-2-4.
Athletics came up 50-percent short of its projections, ending up with only two gold medals and nine silver medals from a combination of veterans and rookies, and five bronze medals.
Wushu, wrestling, cycling and softball all won two fancied gold medals, a number that officials of the Philippine Olympic Committee had pegged as minimum production of each national sports association for the country to improve its performance in Laos.
Unfortunately, a number of consistent gold-medal winners did not deliver.
In spite of the surprise gold medals from newly included sports of bridge and sport climbing—the other one being paragliding—the Philippines could not approximate its targets as medal-rich swimming, shooting and gymnastics failed to win a gold medal.
Moreover, the Philippines also did not win any medal from football, petanque, futsal, canoeing, badminton, water polo, which has historically been a silver medal behind Singapore, paragliding and beach volleyball.
The cerebral card game of bridge, where players bid based on points derived from aces, kings, queens and jacks and enter contracts in any of the four suits or no-trump, had also the distinction of producing the country’s best athlete—Francisco Sainz Alquiros.
The 54-year-old Alquiros edged 8-ball and 9-ball billiards queen Iris Rañola with one additional silver in the mixed butler event.
Providing the hope for future international contest outside of silver medallists Eric Panique and Archand Christian Bagsit in track races, is a 15-year-old fin swimmer providentially named Danielle Faith Sanglap Torres, who captured the countryís third to the last gold medal in the 50m surface race.
The 26th edition of the Games formally wraps up with the closing ceremony here in the Jakabaring Sports City beginning at 7 p.m.
