No extended stay for Filipino athletes in SEA Games
JAKARTA—The bulk of the 512-strong Philippine delegation for the 26th Southeast Asian Games will start arriving Tuesday next week.
Canoe/kayak athletes are set to arrive in batches today to inspect the venue even though their event is still more than a week away.
Lake Cipule, about 50 kilometers east of here, will be the venue of canoe/kayak. The lake overflowed in 2010 due to severe rains, killing scores of people and affecting about 11,000 families.
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The Philippine Olympic Committee is making sure that no athlete will make his stay here a holiday after laying down a stringent rule that requires anyone or any team out of contention to go home as soon as possible.
“Two days on, one day out,” is the rule as teams or athletes funded by the Philippine Sports
Commission have been given just a two-day allowance for early arrival before their respective events.
Once eliminated or once their event is concluded, athletes and officials have until the following day to book a flight back home.
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The labor strike at Philippine Airlines has denied Filipino athletes here the chance—unlike their peers from other nations—to travel to these Games in their own flag carrier.
Instead, the POC and the PSC had to resort to booking flights on Singapore Airlines, which is quite unusual since PAL would have been fully equipped to handle all the travel concerns of the Philippine delegation.
As a result, plane fares rose with Singapore Airlines charging a fee that is a tad higher than what the Philippine delegation would have paid with PAL.
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Despite being played three times in practice over the booming sound system of the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium, the Philippines’ “Lupang Hinirang” went pfft during the official playing of the national anthems before game time.
The starting XI for the Philippines already had their hands on their chests awaiting for the first note of the anthem to be played. Instead, they heard only the final few lines: “Ang mamatay nang dahil sa’yo.”
