Jins fear qualifying will be moved again

Pauline Lopez (right) is among those favored to earn an Olympic berth. —TRISTAN TAMAYO/INQUIRER.NET

Despite the disrupted Olympic qualifying schedule, the Philippines’ taekwondo aspirants are ready to compete at the drop of the hat. It’s because they never stopped training.

Through more than three months of lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, coaches continued to submit weekly training reports for the Philippine Taekwondo Association (PTA) to monitor.“They are training on their own and communicating via internet with their coaches,” said PTA secretary general Rocky Samson.

It’s business as usual for the Olympic aspirants except that they don’t go to the PTA central gym at Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, according to Samson.

The Olympic qualifying for Asia has been postponed once and is expected to be moved once again as the pandemic continues to drag on.

Originally, it was slated in April in Wuxi, China, but because of the coronavirus, it was moved to Amman, Jordan, in July. Now, Samson said they expect it to be moved later in the year.The PTA picked at least six jins with the best chances of making it to the Tokyo Olympics on account of their previous performances counting last year’s Southeast Asian Games.

They include Pauline Lopez, Kirstie Elaine Alora, Kurt Bryan Barbosa, Veronica Graces, Arven Alcantara and Samuel Morrison.

Compared to the previous Olympics, they have a smaller window to make it to the Tokyo Games because they will compete in only one qualifying meet, which is the regional tournament.

There used to be a World qualifying meet, but the international federation decided to just consider international rankings as basis for inclusion instead of holding another event.