Asia’s Pac-Man menaces foes

With pomp and panoply only the Chinese can orchestrate, the 16th Asian Games will officially unfurl in their southern city of Guangzhou today.

A perfect ethnic blend of sports heroes with a common eye on 476 gold medals will duke it out in an alphabet soup of sports, from the ancient discus throw to the hip dancesport, also known as ballroom dancing turned into a global craze by celebrities prancing on television.

Among the athletes from 45 countries girding for war are 188 Filipinos eager to see action in 28 sports.
These men and women have dedicated the past four years and more of their lives running, swimming, boxing, kicking, bicycling, pushing figurines on a board, etc. to earn accolades for flag and country.

The events of the Asian Games, after all, are popular and form the greatest sports show in the region. They put triumphant countries and athletes high on a pedestal of publicity for a fortnight—away from the daily political and economic woes of the world’s most populated continent.
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So the question that vexes is whether our delegation—under the glare of the continental spotlight—could match or even surpass our modest four-gold, six-silver and nine-bronze medal harvest in the Doha Asiad four years ago.

“Everything’s a go, with a lot of prayers,” Asiad chef de mission Joey Romasanta told me before he left for Guangzhou this week.

I baited, but Romasanta was still not biting, refusing to be drawn into fearless forecasting as usual. To him, the biggest landmine remains the touchy subject of medals.

He dropped his guard somewhat, saying without specifics, though, that our contingent is poised to pad the silver and bronze medal yield from 2006.

But then Romasanta admits that our gold veins—dancesport, billiards, chess, taekwondo even—will be tapped by other prospectors and are in danger of being mined by the hosts.

“China is casting a giant shadow, as usual. It is out to embarrass the competition on their home turf, no less,” 

Romasanta says, for what could be the understatement of the year in Asian sports circles.
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Like the arcade game Pac-Man, the People’s Republic of China has been gobbling up the competition since 1982, after bursting into the Asian Games in Tehran in 1974.

Incidentally, Tehran was the nadir of the Philippines’ participation in the quadrennial meet. During the seventh edition of the Games in the Iranian capital, we scored a big fat zero in the gold medal tally, notes Asiad historian Joseph Dumuk.
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Jose L. Pavia, the first commissioner of the Philippine Basketball League, got a pleasant surprise last week.

Despite a heavy downpour, JLP, a veteran news manager and publisher recuperating from surgery, was visited at his Project 4 house by his former staffers at the Philippines News Agency.

Past and present PNAers who showed up included Lito Tacujan, Philippine Star sports editor; Viring Samonte, erstwhile presidential press staff chief; Carol Espiritu, public relations lecturer to P-Noy’s Cabinet members; Ben Cal, the most durable defense reporter around; Judge Leo S. Reyes of the regional trial court in Sanchez Mira, Cagayan; and this writer.

Another ex-PNAer, Inquirer columnist and dzIQ radio host Ramon Tulfo, joined me and Judge Reyes later at the Barangay Vergara, Mandaluyong, place of fellow PDI columnist, Recah Trinidad, to catch up on news about the visit.