MANILA, 8 November — The Philippines has received a major blow from next year’s Southeast Asian Games host Vietnam.
SEA Games officials have agreed on 32 events for the regional competition as Vietnam muscled in several local sports like pateque, bow shooting and shuttlecock kicking to bolster their medal chances.
But the list did not include bowling, golf and marathon, disciplines the Filipinos considered as a veritable gold mine in the country’s campaign in the biennial competition. Athletics produced nine gold medals during the in Kuala Lumpur, the most by any NSA, while bowling won four and golf captured one.
The decision was reached after heated debate at a two-day meeting of the Southeast Asian Sports Federation last week.
The Philippines has consistently won gold medals in bowling, marathon in international competitions, but have been dropped from the list of events for the regional meet set December next year.
Bowling’s exclusion was, indeed, a bitter pill to swallow for the Philippines after the sport was accounted for one of the three golds it won in the recent Asian Games in Busan on top of two silver and one bronze medals.
Paeng Nepomuceno and RJ Bautista reigned supreme in the men’s doubles in Busan.
In the Kuala Lumpur edition of the games two years ago, Filipino bowlers have brought home 11 medals — four golds, six silvers and one bronze — to tie the wushu artists as the second best gold producers, behind the eight of the Pinoy tracksters.
Countries hosting the SEA Games are given the right to decide which sports will make up the calendar aside from the 16 mandatory sports like track and field, swimming, shooting, fencing, basketball, archery, football and weightlifting, among others. The Philippines, the site of the 1991 SEA Games, will host the event in 2005.
“Of course, I feel very bad about it,” said Steve Hontiveros, president of the Philippine Bowling Congress, “not only for the sport of bowling but also for the Philippines’ SEA Games bid as a whole.”
“So we must make a very strong appeal to include bowling in the Vietnam Games, otherwise we will be greatly hampered in our campaign for an impressive finish. It will also set back our program for the 2005 Manila SEA Games,” he added. “I’m still hoping and praying that they reverse the decision.”
Interestingly, according to Hontiveros, the exclusion of bowling in the SEA Games’ calendar of events not only hurt the Philippines’ medal hopes in Vietnam, but also stymied the momentum bowling has generated after the Asiad.
“We won four golds in the SEA Games when we only promised one. We also won one gold in the Asiad when we previously had none. So the sport is on an upswing right now. The players are in high spirits, the whole bowling community is upbeat. Now this had to happen,” Hontiveros said.
The Vietnamese organizers reasoned out that it lacked facilities to host the bowling events.
Hontiveros, however, slammed the host’s reasoning.
“They have bowling centers there, in fact they’re in the process of building a new one,” he said. “The host countries are resorting more and more to the practice of putting in events in the SEA Games where they’re strong, to the detriment of mainstream events.”
“It is a prerogative of the host nation to choose the events for the games, and, apparently, golf is not a winning event for them,” said Rod Feliciano, president of the National Golf Association of the Philippines (NGAP).
Feliciano said he and Philippine Olympic chief Cito Dayrit had made a representation with the Vietnamese ambassador during the meeting to try and influence Hanoi officials to include golf in the calendar of events.
“I am sure our Olympic officials will make an appeal on our behalf,” said Feliciano.
RP golfers captured a gold and a bronze in Kuala Lumpur.
Hanoi reportedly bumped off marathon, where Roy Vence and Cristabel Martes are the reigning champions.
Bowling has staked 12 gold in men and women competitions in past SEA Games while golf has four golds at stake.
Hoang Vinh Giang, the head of Vietnam’s Olympic Committee, said the selection of events was a success for Vietnam because many medals will be given for sports it is strong at, such as martial arts and shooting.
The federation agreed to award 28 sets of medals out of 40 proposed by Vietnam for wushu ñ a martial art ñ and all 42 it proposed for shooting.
The 32 events will be track and field, swimming, badminton, basketball, volleyball, canoeing, rowing, chess, cycling, diving, soccer, gymnastics, body building, handball, karate, taekwondo, judo, wrestling, shuttlecock kicking, shooting, wushu, silat, sepak takraw, table tennis, tennis, boxing, billiards, bow shooting, weightlifting, fencing, pateque and traditional boating.
The organizing committee has until Dec. 5 to decide whether bowling and golf would be played in next year’s SEA Games.
Aside from bowling, other events where the Philippines had hoped to land medals but were scrapped from the roster were softball and baseball.
Chess and billiards were included in the calendar, reportedly because Vietnam has strong medal contenders in these events.
Boxing was also lined up even if the sport was banned in Vietnam for so many years.
Vietnam organizers initially planned to junk boxing but relented after Thailand heavily lobbied for the inclusion. However, there will only be nine instead of the usual 12 categories.
Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) President Cito Dayrit has already filed a formal appeal on behalf of bowling and golf.
But Dayrit said the POC would only appeal for the inclusion of golf and bowling, convinced that the biggest problem facing the organizers was logistics.
He said there is a big chance that bowling and golf will be considered in the SEAG calendar but marathon will be out of the question because of Ho Chi Minh’s narrow streets and the high cost of staging the two events.
In as much as he tried to bat for the inclusion of marathon in the 2003 Games, Dayrit said it was the organizing committee of the regional competition that stood firm against holding the lung-busting event.
Dayrit said the Vietnamese cited a couple of reasons why they thumbed down the staging of marathon.
They also cited the fact that their streets are too narrow to hold a marathon and that they really don’t have the organization to run the event which was also scrapped during the 1999 Brunei SEA Games for security reasons.
According to Dayrit, he even suggested to the Vietnamese that since there’s an event like the 20 km walk, the marathoners can use the same route with probably a couple of turnaround points to make it a full marathon (42.195 km). But again, the suggestion fell on deaf ears.
Track and field president Go Teng Kok made a heartfelt appeal to Dayrit to press for the inlcusion of marathon.
“Please also fight for marathon,”Go said. “As members of the POC family, the Philippine Amateur Track and Field Association as well as the rest of the sports associations concerned are banking that the POC also protects our interests, our athletes and the honor of the country which is primarily at stake here.’
Go boasted that his wards will be good for 15 gold medals in Vietnam, among them Vence and Martes who are considered strong bets in their events after winning over Southeast Asian counterparts in several tournaments this year.
Go said he will try to do everything that he can to convince Vietnam to include marathon — usually the main event in athletics in all multievent sporting meets ñ in the 2003 SEA Games calendar.
“If he can fight for the two sports why not fight for marathon also?” said Go. “We also won two golds in marathon last SEA Games.”
A staunch critic of Dayrit, Go said he is willing to set aside “political differences” with the Olympic chief just so marathon can be included.
“We are talking of two gold medals being taken away from our country,”said Go. “That’s way too important than our differences in the past.”
