POC approves 512 athletes for 26th SEA Games
MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine Olympic Committee approved, as expected, Monday a huge delegation of 512 athletes tasked to improve on the country’s previous fifth-overall placing in the Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia this month.
“I expect improvements from the athletes whose coaches religiously made them do the strenghtening exercises that they were assigned,” said POC president Jose “Peping” Cojuangco Jr.
Familiar names dominate the roster of gold medal candidates, even though no official dared to project whether the Filipinos can approximate their overall championship at home in 2005.
After the breakthrough win, the Philippines plummeted to a record low sixth overall two years later in Thailand and barely improved to fifth in 2009 in Laos.
Traditional boat race is represented by the biggest number of athletes with 39 but its members do not include the powerhouse cast that captured five golds and two silver medals in the recent world championship.
The other sports with a big number of bets are futsal (28), basketball (men and women) 24, track and field (23), baseball (22), fencing (20), football (20), taekwondo (17), judo (15), wushu 14, billiards (13), bowling (12), rowing (12), chess (11), shooting (11), boxing (10), tennis (10), soft tennis (10), and swimming (10).
Completing the list of sports with their number of athletes are archery (8), badminton (8), canoeing (5), equestrian (4), gymnastics (9), golf (7), karatedo (9), pencak silat (9), petanque (7), sailing (5), table tennis (6) and weightlifting (6).
The Philippine Sports Commission is spending P45 million for the campaign, with P10 million coming from tycoon Manny V. Pangilinan and another P5 million from private firms and Malacañang.
Of the 512 athletes, 95 from nine sports are being backed by private sponsors.
