PALEMBANG, Indonesia—Filipino tracksters took off flying, but ended up bruised and humbled in the 26th Southeast Asian Games here.
Long jumper Marestella Torres smashed her meet record with a giant leap of 6.71 meters while Rene Herrera remained steeplechase king right on the first day of athletics competition at the Jakabaring Sport Center.
The Nationals got none in the succeeding days, with marathoners Eric Panique and Eduardo Buenavista capping the sputtering with a silver and a bronze in the final event of track and field.
It was the lowest output by the Filipino tracksters since the 1999 SEA Games in Brunei, where the country managed to win just one gold.
Panique, pride of Himamaylan City, Negros Occidental, clocked 2 hours 28 minutes 26 seconds for the 42K route, unable to keep pace with Indonesian Yahuza, who claimed the gold in 2:27:45.
The 33-year-old Buenavista, once a 5-foot bundle of stamina and power, could only register 2:29:09, way off his runaway winning time of 2:21:10 in the 2009 Laos SEA Games.
Jho-An Banayag, who snatched the gold in Vientiane with a burst of speed in the last kilometer, fared even worse in the distaff side and landed out of the medal with an effort of 2:50:40, good for fourth.
Indonesian superwoman Triyaningsih bagged the gold in 2:45:35, thwarting Myanmar’s Ni Lar San (2:46:37) and Vietnam’s Pham Thi Binh (2:48:43).
Out of the 136 medals staked in athletics, the Filipinos could only account for 16 with two golds, nine silvers and five bronzes as they tumbled from from fourth to fifth overall in the Games’ centerpiece event. They improved on their 14-medal haul in Laos.
Powerhouse Thailand kept its track and field supremacy with a 14-8-10 gold-silver-bronze tally.