ELMER PAMISA was teary eyed as he talked about Carlo Paalam one breakfast morning at the Conrad Tokyo. Why shouldn’t he? Only the night before, his erstwhile scavenger ward clinched a silver—one of four medals Filipino athletes bagged at the Tokyo Olympics.
“That boy really proved his promise, he fulfilled his dream,” Pamisa, who has never fought in the Olympics but was a many-time national boxer representing the nation in the Asian Games, Southeast Asian Games and dozens other international competitions, told Filipino reporters.
Paalam was born to a poor family in Bukidnon and was forced to move to Cagayan de Oro City with his father and siblings to find a living. At 10, he was scavenging at the city landfill for anything he could sell in order to put food on the table.
Until one day, because of the terrible circumstances his family was in, he tried his luck in a local boxing competition for kids his age.
And the rest is history. He showed full potential with his fists and Pamisa took notice and took the boy under his wing and trained him to become one lethal machine on the ring. He is now 23, facing a long and bright future ahead of him to finally nail his own gold medal, even medals, just like Hidilyn Diaz did.
“Coach Pam [Pamisa], thank you so much. If not for you, if you didn’t discover me, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Paalam, also breaking into tears, consistently tells media interviews. “This silver medal represents the life that I came from, this is for you, Coach Pam, and for God, my family and my country.”
Unsung heroes
Pamisa was and will always will be the oft-branded unsung heroes for every success, may it be in sports or in other endeavors. If not for the coaches, assistant coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists, psychologists, what have you, the Diaz-Petecio-Paalam-Marcial quartet could not have possibly gone down the annals of Philippine sports.
Their success is equally traced to the men and women who toiled behind the scenes to mold them to championship form.
The list is that long. Gone are the days when it was a one athlete-one coach relationship reminiscent of the fabled Lydia de Vega-Francisco “Tatang” de Vega tandem. With the advent of sports science and technology, the so-called sports-lab trained athletes, the athletic landscape has fully changed.
“It’s sort of a 24/7 task that even though you don’t get to see the athlete on a daily basis, you’re always on your toes monitoring his or her intake,” said nutritionist Jeaneth Aro, a vital member of the now famous Team HD for Hidilyn Diaz.
It wasn’t Diaz alone who was under the care of Aro, a taekwondo blackbelt. She also made sure the Olympian boxers, including Irish Magno, were eating not only the right kind of food, but as importantly, the right amount and calorie intake.
Then there’s psychologist Karen Trinidad.
“It’s not only during games time when athletes need to be attended to. The pre- and post-competition periods are as vital,” said Trinidad, who, in tandem with Aro, established a routine for the Tokyo Olympians’ campaign, the result of which is now written all over the wall.
Team Philippines had 19 athletes—all of whom threaded the needle’s eye to get to Tokyo—with the delegation almost breaching 80 pax.
Junketeers? Hangers on? There were none of them in Tokyo. Each and every one on Team Philippines had his specific task made tedious by what the Olympic organizers called Playbook—that thick document that specified the dos and don’ts in the Games played under an existing and uncontrolled Covid-19 pandemic.
Each athlete had at least one coach, one conditioning coach, one trainer, and so on and so forth. Count the team manager and team leader, those who should be attending team and coaches’ meetings and other administrative chores.
On top of the back office are Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) President Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino and Chef de Mission Mariano “Nonong” Araneta.
Tolentino made sure everyone on Team Philippines, particularly the athletes, were accorded Olympic-standard treatment, while Araneta took charge of all administrative functions—and these were a lot.
“There were daily CDM meetings, monitoring, etc., set by the organizers just to make sure everything’s well and the Playbook’s being followed,” Araneta said. “The pandemic made everything difficult because [the concern was] not only on sports, but on the health and safety of everyone.”
A typical day for Araneta at the pandemic Olympics started just after an early breakfast and wound up when the last Filipino athlete who trained or competed for the day has already eaten his dinner and ready for bed at the Olympic Village (OLV).
Araneta said he’d be lucky if he takes his dinner at the hotel, which was his second full meal for the day.
“I preferred to get me a sandwich almost every day from the OLV grab-and-go [food] stand,” he said. “That I preferred because I avoided the mess hall which was always filled with athletes and coaches.”
Leanest secretariat
The Philippine secretariat goes down as the leanest. Dinah Remolacio (General Manager) was Araneta’s seconds, attending to administrative work; Martin Gregorio (Games Management Officer and Deputy Covid-19 Liaison Officer) was all around, and so were Jarryd Bello (Activity Monitoring and Protocol Officer) and Magnum Membrere (Administration and Logistics) who also had to attend to rower Cris Nievarez.
Of course, Team Doctor Randy Molo, although he didn’t have the luxury of a nurse or therapist, was thankful all medical needs were provided for by the Games organizers at the Olympic Village.
Boy, were their tasks beyond the eight-hour jobs they have back home.
Billy Sumagui is a veteran lawyer, but in Tokyo, he went beyond his legalese career. He was the team’s Covid-19 liaison officer, a task that’s not exclusive to a doctor or nurse, but carved for someone who’s a stickler and who knows how to interpret rules.
There was also Marc Velasco, Philippine Sports Commission Chairman William Ramirez’s chief of staff who made sure government kept an eye on each and every athlete in and outside of competition.
The coaches—Julius Naranjo for Diaz and Ronald Chavez, Nolito “Boy” Velasco and Reynaldo Galido for the boxers, plus psychologist Marcus Manalo. They were outside the glare of the klieg lights but behind the scenes, long before their athletes wake up in the morning and long after they have gone to sleep, still burned the midnight oil strategizing for the next day.
Unsung heroes. Hardly the primary subject of interviews or photo-ops. Hardly if not all seen. But they were all part and parcel of the Tokyo Olympics success.
Call them indispensables.