PSC refocuses PNG, BP with Olympics in mind

Temporarily shelved due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the Philippine National Games (PNG) this year will be a showcase of sports that have a high probability of sending Filipino athletes to the Olympics.

Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) Chair Butch Ramirez, whose agency is in charge of organizing the annual PNG, wants to limit the calendar of disciplines to 20 sports, all of them Olympic events.

“If they didn’t make it to the PNG, my advice to the leaders of the other sports is to organize a national tournament of their own,’’ Ramirez said.

He added the concept of confining the quantity of sports in the PNG would also apply to the Batang Pinoy championships.

The PSC has to narrow down the number of sports that should be prioritized by classifying them accordingly following the influx of new sports last year during the country’s hosting of the Southeast Asian Games.

“There are now 64 sports that seek financial assistance from the PSC. We have to set the direction and put up strong policies for us to manage these requests efficiently,’’ Ramirez said.

Priority will be given to individual athletes who qualified to the Olympics and those athletes with the potential to also make it to the Summer Games.

On the second level of priority are performing and nonperforming Olympic sports while Asian and Southeast Asian sports will be bunched in the same group. Disciplines under new sports will be pooled together in a different category.

Both the PNG, normally penciled during the summer, and the Batang Pinoy, a multisport event for the finest young athletes 15 years old and below, have no new schedules yet.