Peping Cojuangco: More funding for top athletes than NSAs

Peping: more funding for top athletes.

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) will request the Philippine Sports Commission to prioritize support for outstanding athletes instead of the NSAs (national sports associations).

“The outstanding athletes should get additional funding, not the NSAs,” said POC president Jose “Peping” Cojuangco Jr. after Wednesday’s POC executive board meeting held in the wake of the country’s dismal sixth overall finish in the 26th Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia.

It was a clear departure from the previous stand of the Olympic body and the PSC to financially support disciplines with a high probability of landing gold medals in overseas tournaments.

The setup proved a failure after Team Philippines came up with a meager haul of 36 gold, 56 silver and 77 bronze medals despite fielding over 500 athletes.

“Some congressmen told me to make a list of athletes who deserve additional funding,” said Cojuangco.

The PSC has earlier threatened to cut by at least 50 percent the government allocation of NSAs that failed to land a medal in the SEA Games.

Several sports failed to live up to expectations and a handful even went home empty-handed, among them aquatics, football, volleyball, gymnastics, badminton, petanque, futsal, canoe-kayak and paragliding.

The PSC is also set to reduce the allowances of athletes who performed poorly in the SEA Games.

Cojuangco said he would also lobby for the implementation of a point system to determine the overall championship in future SEA Games to give more weight to the silver and bronze medals won.

He said he would present the idea of the points system similar to that being used in the Palarong Pambansa in the next SEA Games Federation meeting which Myanmar will host next year. Myanmar will be the venue of SEAG 2013.