AS THE dust settles and our sports officials, in their usual manner, are left presenting master plans that require massive public spending, perhaps it’s time we reassess what happened in the recent Olympics and use this to prevent the same failures from occurring again.
Let us try to examine what really happened to our athletes:
There was a great disparity of support given to different sports. Of course, massive money, mostly from private companies, went to our national sport, basketball. But let’s face it. Height will always be might in this sport, and so it may take a very long time for us to reach our dream of bringing home a medal here.
Sadly, we also failed miserably in the sport in which most of us thought we had a chance to bring home a medal and which also enjoyed massive support from the private sector.
It was very alarming to hear the comment of one of the boxers after he bowed out in the first round. He discovered that he needed more training.
(As an aside, I think that the judging system in boxing that they used in this year’s Olympics was deeply flawed, and left very much subject to human frailty.)
This actually shows us that massive funding should be complimented with proper supervision to make sure that the sponsors’ money is well spent in the development of the athlete.
In business you can more or less predict your rate of return. However, in sports it doesn’t necessarily follow that more money spent automatically means better results.
The only bright spot was the athlete who had minimal financial support, our silver medalist Hidilyn Diaz. Perhaps this lack of support kept her hungry and determined to persevere despite the disappointments she had experienced in the previous Olympic Games.
It is worth noting that she went under the supervision of a nutritionist-chef, who at the onset sponsored her food for a few months, to help her optimize her potential.
Proper nutrition is an aspect that is vital to every athlete’s performance and should be patterned and fitted to any particular sport.
The majority of our athletes comes from the underprivileged sector of our society. This fact makes it a challenge for the people who fund the athlete to calibrate, provide and satisfy the athlete’s needs while keeping their hunger for going the distance alive, the way Hidilyn has.
Instead of sending more than the necessary number of officials as part of the delegation to “accompany” the athletes to the various international and local events he participates in, it may be wiser to spend government funds building more facilities all over the country to serve as a means of discovering and training potential champions.
I feel that it is not prudent, however, to displace the Filipino athlete at the early stages of his training. Coming from the underprivileged sector of society, he usually lacks the confidence to leave his family and his surroundings. Taking him to “big city” Manila, where the training facilities and the coaches are, now may not always be a good idea. If training centers could be built all over the country, closer to these athletes’ homes, they can begin their early training there. Later, the better ones can come to Manila.
Now that we have a no-nonsense President who seems to be very determined to make changes, we hope sports will be included on his agenda.
Perhaps sponsors of certain sports that have a better chance of bringing honor to the country could be given an incentive for every peso donated to the athlete and his sport. We must all remain aware, however, that even with the best funding, it takes more than a decade to produce a world-class athlete.