Dumaguete PNG exposes misfits from nat’l pool

THE RECENT Philippine National Games served as an eye-opener to the Philippine Sports Commission that quite a number of athletes, including some gold medalists in the Southeast Asian Games last year, no longer deserve to be in the national pool.

PSC chair Richie Garcia yesterday said a committee will be formed to review the performance of national athletes following a significant dip in the performances of some athletes during the PNG held in Dumaguete City two weeks ago.

Without naming them, Garcia hinted that athletes who took the PNG for granted may be booted out of the 600-member national pool from 54 national sports associations and lose their allowances.

“I feel there are some athletes who deserve to be in the national pool and there are athletes in the pool who don’t deserve to be there,” said Garcia.

“The NSAs should remove them. But we can’t force the NSAs, so the best thing we could do is stop the allowances of these athletes,” he added.

Garcia said Philippine Olympic Committee president Jose “Peping” Cojuangco Jr. brought up the formation of the committee composed of POC and PSC officials in a recent meeting to weed out nonperforming athletes.

“This committee will analyze the performance of the athletes and impose certain sanctions or adjustments in their classification in the PSC payroll,” said Garcia.

Garcia rued that these athletes took the PNG lightly thinking that the real competitions such as the SEA Games and the Asian Games are still a year or two away.

“They seem to have that mentality. They’re not excited to start preparing themselves now or in the future,” said Garcia.

“If you are a gold medalist in the SEA Games and you ended up with nothing (in the PNG), maybe you should start all over again and prove yourself worthy,” he added. “Some of them prefer to relax than do the hard work. We’re not going to allow this.”