Dissecting the Olympic Debacle (part 1)

Another Olympics, another debacle for Team Philippines.

I actually smelled the proverbial sharks circling the waters as early as when the disaster named, "Eric Ang eliminated in first round," reared its ugly head, but rather than just call for heads to roll, I watched and cheered for the rest of Team Philippines, then set up a plan for for the future. After all, when the team wins, we all win.

The first thing we have to do is redirect some of our sports programs. Our sports officials aren't all dumbells. I mean, a lot of them are, but a good number of them are also on the correct path. Some of their plans have a good motive behind them, but I feel they have been used incorrectly.

Selecting the Selection

A couple of years ago, with the overall victory of the 2005 Sea Games a recent memory, the President declared that we must select 10 priority sports. These would be (Olympic) sports where we could excel in, and the government would provide extra funding to the national sports associations (NSA) to help them prepare for the Olympics.

This was a plan I was actually supportive of, until I heard the sports that were picked. Among the picks were Diving, Boxing, Taekwondo, Wushu, and the reason I hated this move was that a lot of these sports were "judgment sports," meaning winners would be decided by judging. Every year, at least a couple of our NSAs would bemoan that we lost in some competition because we. "got cheated," in the judging. In fact, all our boxers in the Olympics have been somehow "cheated," if our officials are to be believed. The most recent example would be, Harry Tanamor in the 2008 Oympics. Even if I believe that we were shortchanged each and every time we competed in the Olympics, all that means is that since 1964, we have been continually screwed and we have been unable to do anything about the judging. I fthis is the case, isn't it about time to avoid "judgement sports?" It has been well documented that the host almost always wins the judgment sports, and since we won't and can't host an Olympics anytime in the next few decades, it might be prudent to pick priority sports with no judges involved.

Reality Bites

Another thing to consider in picking our priority sports is our Filipino body structure. Most of our people are short and while we have some pretty athletic people, we will never outjump or outrun everyone else in the world. Maybe it's time to pick sports that don't put a premium on athleticism or height. With this in mind, we have to say no to swimming, athletics events, basketball and the like, as painful as it may sound. Instead, we should look into Olympic sports that we can really compete in, with the proper training. A good start would be table tennis, equestrian and sailing. Some of these sprts may be expensive, but if we cut the funding of the sports we can't excel in, we can then have the extra cash to fund these sports instead. Finite sports, sports where athletes do not bodily compete against each other (meaning they guard or try to stop each other) are good sports to develop. Some examples would be archery and shooting (I know, our two athletes were destroyed in Beijing, but with mroe exposure and training, we can produce better athletes in this field.)


(part two to be posted soon)