Are we sending ‘junketeers’ to the Asiad?

COMPETING in 30 sports, the Philippine Olympic Committee has approved a tentative list of 247 athletes to the 16th Asian Games on Nov. 12 to 27 in Guangzhou, China.
“These athletes have a strong chance of bagging at least a bronze medal,” said chief of mission Joey Romasanta.
He also explained that the list ballooned to 247 because of the addition of 50 male and female athletes who will take part in dragon boat racing.
Dragon boat was not included in the calendar of the 2006 Doha Asiad, where the Philippines won four gold medals. This time, however, officials of both the POC and Philippine Sports Commission hope to surpass that golden output, predicting a haul of at least 10 golds in the Guangzhou Games.
“It’s difficult to surpass that,” said a sports critic, stressing that many of those who will make it to the delegation are potential junketeers.
He noted that Romasanta, a former Gintong Alay executive director—the country’s most successful sports program in recent memory—might have forgotten what he said earlier.
“The gold-medal winners in the 2009 Laos Southeast Asian Games and the 2006 Doha Asiad,” he had said, “could not be used as a yardstick in selecting this year’s Guangzhou-bound athletes.”
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But why are Romasanta and the other members of the POC-PSC Task Force singing a different tune?
In my view, it would be better if the task force sticks to its original criteria of meeting the qualifying standard based on the existing Asian Games records—at least for measurable events—rather than on their gold-medal finish?
In the last three stagings of the Asian Games, Philippine participation has dipped dramatically.
Apart from the four gold medals in Doha 2006, RP won six silvers and nine bronzes. In the 2002 Busan Asiad, the Filipinos bagged three golds, seven silvers and 16 bronzes. Before that, the country picked up just a lone gold to land a miserable 21st overall in the 1998 Bangkok Asiad.
Our countrymen are more conscious now than ever about the number of medals we can win in the Guangzhou Games because taxpayers’ money are being spent for the Asiad campaign.
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Back then, Olympic boxing used to be an eagerly anticipated sport.
Boxing produced champions who became legends, among them Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard and the Spinks brothers—Michael and Leon—and Cuba’s Teofilo Stevenson, and the late Roberto Balado, for whom the Balado Cup is held annually in his honor.
But not anymore. NBC, the giant US television channel and a longtime supporter of the Olympic Games, didn’t show Olympic boxing at prime time during the 1996 Atlanta Games, choosing to telecast the fights between 12:30 a.m. and 2 a.m.
“When we put on boxing, we lose up to 75 percent of the female audience,” said NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol.
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Fekrou Kidane, editor in chief of “Olympic Message,” a publication of the International Olympic Committee, once said, “The state is the primary sponsor of sports.”
In addition to providing financial support, Kidane explained, “governmental agencies help in other sectors.”
The defense department provides ground and air transport to athletic delegations. Schools loan their sports facilities to impoverished clubs. The health department supplies the medical team for competitions, while security is provided by the interior department.
Basically, nothing could be done without government, he emphasized.
“What else is it there for?” he asked.