INQUIRER Sports

BEIJING--Long jumper Henry Dagmil takes his act to the biggest stage of his career Saturday when he competes in the qualifying round of his event at the state-of-the-art Bird's Nest main Olympic stadium here.

The United States-trained Dagmil, Southeast Asia's best with a Philippine record of 7.97 meters, joins long jump's first squad among entries whose failed to go beyond the Beijing Olympics' "Group A" pre-qualification criteria of 8.20m.

The second and final squad, including Panamanian world champion Irving Saladino, runner-up Ireland's Andrew Howe and American Dwight Philips, gets going after the B jumpers have completed their required six jumps from 8 p.m.

"If I do 8.20, perhaps I could reach the finals," said Dagmil, who has been practicing at Olympic satellite venues since arriving with the bulk of the RP delegation here two days before the opening ceremonies. "In long jump, a push here and a flex there could pull off surprises."

The 26-year-old jumper from South Cotabato broke his own RP record of 7.87m with a leap of 7.97m in winning the gold three months ago at the 2008 Jim Bush Southern California USITF Championships.

He injured his groin attempting to reach the 8.05m Olympic criteria in a Malaysia meet, though, and spent the next month doing only light workouts.

Dagmil made it to the national contingent only when the national athletics association picked him as one of its two mandatory participants, along with female jumper Marestella Torres, for the Beijing Games. Torres sees action on Tuesday.

Trained in the US for almost a year by renowned California State U coach Chris Huffins, Dagmil will be hard-pressed to even approximate the effort of Saudi Arabia's Mohamed Salman Al Khuwalidi, who holds the Asian continental record of 8.48m.