THE past four decades in our sports archive is a gallery of glad circumstance and vivid memories, of heroes and heroines with feats carved in stones, and even of losers with their heartaches written on sand.
To those of us who have chased stories on the off-beaten tracks and the cramped, low-ceilinged quarters of old Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, they were not just names and faces flashing happy grins, unabashedly kissing their medals or trophies and absorbing the adulation of the smitten throng.
They were authentic heroes, the icons of our age. If they became winners, it was not always because some government agencies laid out a well-planned training program, hired excellent coaches and trainers for them, paid for their complete board and lodging, and took care of their other basic needs so as not to dissipate their energy and deflect their focus.
They were winners because they willed themselves to be first at the podium. They won respect from, and inspired fear in their rivals, and gathered the gallery’s acclaim—those seemed the easy, climactic images as television cameras portrayed them in moments of triumphs. But behind those spectacles were the steely will, the tough character, the gutsy desire to become excellent.
Reviewing the various record books, I could see the pair of world bowling champions Paeng Nepomuceno and Bong Coo. Between them, they won more titles than any two bowlers of the same nationality anywhere in the world. There was sparkling Arianne Cerdena, “gold medalist” at the Seoul Olympics, in quotation marks because bowling was a guest sport, and erstwhile duckpin star Lita de la Rosa, who routinely beat rivals with her unorthodox game.
There were Asia’s sprint queen, our last, the Bulacan marvel Lydia de Vega and her dramatic races in the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints, and the continent’s fastest quarter-miler Isidro del Prado and his famed Bicol Express 4×400-meter relay squad. They were, let me stress, trained under Project: Gintong Alay, still the country’s most successful sports training program, headed by a highly motivated and qualified runner named Michael and surnamed Marcos Keon.
Many wonder why, despite Gintong Alay’s enormous success, no one ever touched this program again or acknowledged that it existed or that Keon, for all his famous temper, was a man who kept his lofty promises in the training circuit. But while Gintong Alay, ran famously by the Australian coach Anthony Benson, made a great run in training, so did our tracksters. When they ran in the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, their rivals were overwhelmed. Entered in the Asian Games, in New Delhi, Lydia nipped Indian wonder girl PT Usha in a battle in the sprints that left the crowd limp from excitement.
For those too young to know, yes, we had a great run of champions right from the very beginning of the SEA Games, in 1977 in Kuala Lumpur, until a spiral, unforgivable decline ruined our stature in the last ten years.
Thinking of the other greats, I could picture the long jumper Elma Muros, who defied creeping age and motherhood; swimmers Christine Jacob and Akiko Thomson, ageless Joan Chan in archery, boxer Efren Tabanas, and the shooting father-and-son tandem of Tom and Tac Padilla. Bea Lucero will forever be that pretty, lithe figure strutting and prancing on the floor, and throwing her body in the balance beam and uneven bars before she switched to the more physical event of taekwondo.
Light-flyweight Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco ended our 32-year-old Olympic medal drought with a silver in the Atlanta Games in 1996. It somehow took on the same heartbreaking finish as the controversial gold-medal fight that possibly robbed Anthony Villanueva of his rightful due in the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad.
Boxing produced more medals in the Olympics than any other sport, a historic haul of two silver and three bronze medals, counting those won by Leopoldo Serrantes, Roel Velasco and Mansueto Velasco in three separate Olympiads.
Many more great SEA Games campaigners escaped the range of my memory, but I could not forget tennis ace Felix Barrientos, heavyweight Jaime Sebastian in weightlifting, and the immortal pair in billiards, Jose “Amang” Parica and Efren “Bata” Reyes.
If the year 2005 was the best of times when we reigned supreme with a record 105 gold medals before our countrymen, the just-concluded 28th edition of the regional meet in Singapore could well pass as the worst of times.
A bloated contingent of more than 400 athletes could only surpass by a solitary gold medal the 28 gold-medal production in Burma two years ago, which was our rock-bottom finish in history at seventh place.
The advent of new stars in medal-rich athletics and boxing provided a big lift to our sagging spirit, and more than covered up for the embarrassing splash flat on their backs by two shameless divers, now seen in video that went viralon the Internet.
Fil-foreign sprinters Eric Shawn Cray and Kayla Richardson emerged as the new toasts of the center-piece century dashes, while Caleb Stuart smashed the meet record in his favorite hammer throw event.
Already an Olympics qualifier in Rio de Janeiro next year, Cray also ruled the 400-meter hurdles in a new record time. But injuries prevented the athletics team from winning its 10 gold-medal target.
By average, the boxers were the most prodigious as they also carted home five gold medals to spark a nine gold-medal day rush. The splendid feat simply showed that a serious training program would produce big results when properly handled.
Josie Gabuco, Mario Fernandez, Ian Clark Bautista, Eumir Felix Marcial and Junel Cantancio presided over that scintillating show in the ring as the Filipinos reclaimed their title as the boxing power of Southeast Asia.
There were scattered heroics like the solitary gold victory of Elvie Bildivino in shooting, the upset authored by 15-year-old Chezka Centeno in billiards, and a sweep of the two gold medals in triathlon by Claire Adorna and Nikko Huelgas.
Those feats were duplicated by the Blu Boys and the Blu Girls, who ruled men’s and women’s softball; by the Volcanoes, who made a clean sweep of all their matches in rugby 7; and the Gilas Pilipinas Cadets, who retained the title closest to our hearts with a clean slate in basketball.
These were the many hits and the many misses, but to say that the Filipino athletes were short in financial support from the government en route to Singapore carried no rhyme or reason.
Perhaps, Philippine Olympic Committee First Vice President Joey Romasanta was still dizzy when he blamed Malacañang for an alleged lack of support to our national athletes.
The Philippine Sports Commission is awash with funds from annual entitlements in the General Appropriations Act, in addition to hefty shares from casino earnings and lotto sales.
And so, to us, those were modest victories, but the promise of better campaigns in the more prestigious Asian Games shone brighter with a bumper crop of talents in track and field and boxing.
Those shining exploits, breathtaking runs and striking grace of our athletic wonders and boxing heroes would not change the horizons of our world and the landscape of our happy recollections.
1 comment
We didn’t lose the 10 golds because of injuries. We lost the 10 golds because other countries athletes are improving alot faster than our local athletes due to foreign coaches, more exposures and better programs put in place by there Athletics Federations. If you look at the reality four of our five gold medalists were Fil-Heritage atheltes and one gold came from local Ulboc.