Bare Eye
Team Philippines: Who’s the biggest flop of all?
By Recah Trinidad
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 06:07:00 08/14/2008
Filed Under: Summer Olympics
BEIJING—They flew here to look for the best and brightest athletes but, after three dismal Philippine failures—in shooting, weightlifting and swimming—members of the Filipino media were caught wondering who’s the dumbest among the early Filipino losers.
That’s no longer funny. Especially for Jose Cojuangco, intrepid head of the Philippine Olympic Committee, who in Manila loved to say he smelled a medal for the Filipino in this 29th Summer Olympics.
Good that Cojuangco, an incurable optimist, did not predict an outright first gold medal for the Philippines.
A grizzled politician, the man also knew the honest limitations of the 15-man RP contingent that pitifully got outnumbered by free-riding officials.
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So let the search for the biggest flop begin.
Shooter Eric Ang did the (dis)honor of starting silly by shooting anything but the birds in the trap event, RP’s first bid on the first day of Olympic action.
Ang, said to be a crony of a Malacańang’s favorite governor from the North, did his best as promised but, as fate would have it, missed all but one of the targets to finish at the bottom.
He got disoriented, overwhelmed, he explained, obviously thinking he was out on a merchant group hunt for tame October snipes.
Instantly, they also had to wonder if this was the same lone entry that made Cojuangco predict a possible medal in shooting.
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In fairness to Hidilyn Diaz, a cute, tiny weightlifter, she had said she did not realistically hope for a medal here, not even if all the top bets fell ill on competition day.
The daughter of a tricycle driver from Zamboanga, she inevitably developed a liking for the sport after her unforgiving daily task of hauling hefty pails of water from a far-off well for household use.
Of course, she could have finished better than 11th in a field of 12.
A bit odd but you also have to look and listen as she made the wholesale, straight-faced vow to win in the next Olympics.
“I’m sure I can win in London,” she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer as she toured the vast, sun-beaten, crowded Tiananmen Square on Tuesday.
Her best lift of 107 kilos in the snatch bested the RP mark; although the eventual winner did 134 kilos.
She’s only 17 and her coach, Seoul Olympian Ramon Solis, pointed to the fact that the gold hauler from host China team was already over 30, twice the age of Hidilyn.
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That alone should put Diaz out of the dumbest scroll.
But readily giving shooter Ang a run for his money at the end of action Tuesday was the celebrated swimmer Miguel Molina, voted most outstanding athlete of the 2007 Southeast Asian Games.
After surprisingly pulling out of his first event, Molina returned to the pool to take a shot at the 200-meter breaststroke semifinals later Tuesday.
Lucky he did not drown.
Molina was so mediocre he could only clock 2:16.94, a far cry from the 2:16.62 he registered in breaking the national mark while in the United States.
That record swim, by the way, qualified Molina to the Olympics but the phenomenal tanker who did that feat has so far not shown up in the current Beijing Summer Games.
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Anyway, there should be a turn for the better when boxer Harry Tańamor, the top RP medal hope who was still overweight Tuesday, has fought his first bout against a Ghanian late Wednesday.
At least two other top medal bets, taekwondo’s Antoinette Rivero and Tshomlee Go, will join in the lonely medal hunt later.
Meanwhile, long jumper Henry Dagmil, whom Cojuangco had predicted would make the standard and readily qualify, will compete on Saturday.
Dagmil made it as the country’s mandatory male entry in athletics after failing to sail past the Olympic qualifying mark despite repeated tries.
There are solid signs he would be a lead flop among failed RP campaigners here after Saturday.
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