Olympic training camp for Philippine athletes

Boxer Mark Anthony Barriga can size up his prospective opponents in the Olympics weeks before the big fight.

Philippine chef de mission Manny Lopez has arranged a pre-Games training camp for Filipino athletes in  the London Olympics designed to familiarize them with potential rivals and competition venues.

Besides Barriga, the lone Pinoy qualifier in men’s boxing, Lopez said long jumper Marestella Torres and steeplechase entry Rene Herrera will be in London at least three weeks in advance and train alongside their fellow Olympians.

Philippine Amateur Track and Field Association president Go Teng Kok  earlier assigned former long jump queen and two-time Olympian Lerma Bulauitan-Gabito to help Torres prepare for the London Games.

Go said Bulauitan-Gabito will accompany Torres in the Asian Grand Prix on May 6 to 16 in Bangkok which is part of the 31-year-old long jumper’s buildup for the Olympics.

Lopez said the London 2012 Organizing Committee (Locog) will house the athletes and allow them to use the facilities in their events for free leading to the July 27 to Aug. 12 Games.

“The atmosphere and high-intensity training in these pre-Games camps will give our athletes an insight of what is like to be in the Olympics,” said Lopez, who arrived Tuesday from the pre-delegation registration meeting for Asian countries in the Olympics held in Kuala Lumpur.

“When competition time comes, they will no longer feel uncomfortable and intimidated,” added the first vice president of the Philippine Olympic Committee.

Lopez, a long-time president of the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines before the group of Manny V. Pangilinan took over in 2009, said that pre-Games training camps are vital for the athletes.

“Back then, I made sure that our boxers participate in these pre-Olympic training camps and some of them were successful,” said Lopez.