Can Tañamor deliver?

The Philippines has never won a gold medal since joining the 1924 Paris Olympics. So far, our country has won eight medals – two silvers and six bronzes. Of the eight Olympic medals, five were courtesy of the boxers. In fact, the last three medals the Philippines won were from boxing.

This leads to the question: can Harry Tañamor deliver and win the coveted gold medal in this year’s Beijing Olympics?

Tañamor is the lone boxer in the 15-man RP delegation to the Beijing Games that opens one week from today.  He qualified for the light flyweight division (48 kg) by settling for silver in last year’s world amateur boxing championship in Chicago, losing to Zou Shiming of China.

As I have written before, Shiming will be “unbeatable” in his turf. The host country will be going all out to win as much gold as possible to surpass the US as an Olympic sports power. China needs every medal they could squeeze from any discipline and may have already tagged Shiming as a gold medal winner. Thus, I won’t be surprised if Shiming gets “safe passage” to the final while the other boxers, including Tañamor, get the tougher draw, and nothing but hell from the judges.

Furthermore, Sports Illustrated, in its Olympic preview this week, predicted that Tañamor is only good for the silver, while Shiming is worth the gold.

While I don’t have the accuracy rate of previous Sports Illustrated predictions, I guess the magazine had its basis for coming out with such a verdict. In that Chicago final last year, Shiming convincingly beat Tañamor, 16-3! In the 2004 Athens Olympics, Tañamor failed to make the second round, losing by knockout to a Korean boxer.

In fairness to Tañamor, he has been training long and hard for this shot at the gold, which could be his last. He has been boxing in international events, got himself a Cuban coach, hopefully learned his lessons and is now in the final phases of his training. Then again, can he deliver?

Tañamor has his work cut out for him: he has to knock out his rivals to win. Olympic boxing has a history of controversial, ridiculous and even bizarre decisions. I’ve watched boxers that were clearly landing the punches, winning the round but got raw deals from the judges.

Should Tañamor win the gold medal, he’s poised to receive a lot of money when he returns, like to the tune of P11.5M (as of yesterday), not to mention all the accolades, praises, approval, honor, tribute, homage, respect, distinction, esteem that will go with it.

Unfortunately, we have to understand that Tañamor’s chances are very slim. I know that we love underdogs, but I’ve watched his fight with Shiming; and if he doesn’t have any new weapon in his arsenal, or learned how to cut the ring and bring the fight to the Chinese, I just don’t see him winning, granting he makes the final.

I wish Tañamor could prove Sports Illustrated and me wrong!

* * *

Advanced birthday greetings to our sports editor, Manny Villaruel, who will be celebrating his birthday on Monday, August 4. Sir, may the Lord grant the righteous wishes of your heart this special day.

For comments, please e-mail [email protected]