Sprinter Honasan bags second gold; chess adds 3 as PH hikes total to 11

Cielo Honasan (left) sprints her way to the 100m gold. —CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/JANNETH TENORIO

KUALA LUMPUR—Cielo Honasan won her second gold medal of the meet while the chess team came through with three victories as Team Philippines raked in eight golds Wednesday to climb to fifth spot in the Asean Para Games here.

Honasan nailed the century dash gold in 13.96 seconds at Bukit Jalil National Stadium to complete a sprint double after she topped the 200m Tuesday.

Honasan, a 15-year-old polio victim who runs with a longer left leg, will shoot for a sprint treble when she competes in the 400m Thursday.

Prudencia Panaligan also came through with a gold in the 100m for T52/53/54 with a clocking of 18.32 seconds.

Fide Master Sander Severino drew his final round match with Vietnam’s Nguyen Anh Tuan to claim the individual gold in standard play of the physically impaired with 5.5 points, half a point ahead of FM Maksum Firdaus of Indonesia.

Severino’s points plus the 3.5 points of Henry Lopez, who halved the point with Vietnam’s Nguyen Van Quan, gave the Philippines nine points, the same score by Indonesians Firdaus and Sutikno.

But the Filipinos wound up with the better tiebreaker courtesy of the highest individual score logged by Severino to clinch the team crown.

Delegation flag-bearer Menandro Redor and Arman Subastre missed the individual gold but teamed up with Israel Peligro to snatch the B2/B3 (partially blind) team gold with 9.5 points, besting Indonesia, which relied on individual gold winner Gayu Satrio, by a full point.

The Philippines now has 11 golds on top of 12 silvers and 11 bronzes. Indonesia remained on top with a 57-39-28 (gold-silver-bronze) haul while host Malaysia was at No. 2 with 48-41-35.

Ernie Gawilan seized the 400m freestyle gold for S8 and added a silver in 100m butterfly. Gary Bejino delivered the country’s first swimming gold in the 400m freestyle for S7.

Arthus Bucay copped cycling’s first gold via the men’s individual time trial for C5 with a time of 17:44.186.

Read more...