LOS BAÑOS—Laguna is fielding 330 athletes in its defense of the Bicol-Southern Tagalog qualifying leg championship of the 3rd Philippine Olympic Festival which starts Thursday at the University of the Philippines field here.

The host province boasts of entries in all 17 sports backstopped by 56 coaches and technical officials in the five-day meet designed to tap potential talents for the national team.

Hostilities in softball, table tennis, archery, football and archery originally set Wednesday were rescheduled for Thursday together with chess, volleyball and taekwondo.

Laguna’s bets came in full force during the opening rites headed by Philippine Olympic Committee and POF chair Robert Aventajado and dwarfed the other participating local government units in the parade of athletes.

University of the Philippines chancellor Dr. Luis Rey Velasco declared the games open after a modest opening ceremony at the Freedom Park inside the campus kicked off by the traditional Olympic torch relay.

Scheduled the entire day, taekwondo is offering 36 gold medals while arnis has 81 golds up for grabs in the event supported by Pagcor, ACCEL, Globe Telecom, Negros Navigation, Summit Mineral Water, AMA Computer College and Creativity Lounge.

POF organizers scratched athletics from the roster of disciplines due to the lack of participants.

Aquatics, judo, karatedo and muay thai start Friday.

A total of 1,354 athletes from Laguna, Batangas, Cavite, Camarines Sur, Naga City, Puerto Princesa City, Quezon, Masbate, Rizal and Oriental Mindoro will participate in the BST leg.

The BST qualifying is the fifth and final leg of this year’s POF, which will gather all the medalists and top performers of each stage to the national championships to be hosted by Cagayan de Oro next month.