The Olympics Pinoys lorded over

(Second of three parts)

In late February this year, GMA Artist Center head Ida Henares flew to New York for a much-needed break and, yes, to avail of a plane ticket that was already set to expire.

On her way back to Manila (this was already sometime in March), she had to catch her connecting flight in Los Angeles and since she didn’t want to be idle at the airport (LAX), she asked her LA-based friends Mendrei and Cecile Leelin (they own Goldilocks and also produce concerts in the West Coast) to please pick her up so that they could catch up personally on each other.

The Leelins had a better idea: To make their time more productive, they brought Ida to meet up with Randy and Barbara Krupp, who own Showcase Academy, which in turn is involved with the World Championships of Performing Arts.

After finding out that Ida heads GMA 7’s Artist Center and knowing fully well that there are a lot of great talents here in the Philippines, Randy Krupp immediately asked her to field entries in the World Championships of Performing Arts, which is often referred to as a talent Olympics.

Ida, however, couldn’t give any commitment that time because she was really just there on a stopover and – the responsible executive that she is – she wanted to find out more about the organization. Surely, she wasn’t striking a deal that important in between connecting flights. But she promised to communicate with the Krupps through e-mail.

In Manila, she tried to find out more about the contest (again through the wonders of e-mail) and liked what she discovered. It’s a tough competition – that’s for sure. But that challenged her all the more. The only problem was that she only had five months to organize a delegation to send to this talent Olympics. (During that time she was just thinking of joining, the delegates from other countries were already in full swing with their training.)

Although the contest was also open to dancers, instrumentalists, actors, models and even magicians and baton twirlers, she thought it would be best to send singers. To begin with, we have a lot of exceptional vocalists in this country and it was just a matter of picking out the right people.

And who were the right people? All of a sudden, she remembered a Cebuana singer named Rizza Navales. Rizza had been brought to her earlier and Ida was impressed with the singer’s vocal prowess. However, Ida felt Ms. Navales still needed a little more fine tuning that time and when the morning show Sis did a week-long series on makeover, Ida lost no time signing up the talented singer from the Queen City of the South. Ms. Henares obviously has foresight. When she needed a female contestant for the talent Olympics, Rizza Navales was already ripe for the competition.

Getting a male contestant was no sweat. Jed Madela had won in the Voice of Asia and Ida felt he stood a chance in the Burbank-based contest.

What was tough was getting sponsors to pay for the delegation’s plane fare (eventually provided by Philippine Airlines), hotel accommodations and meals.

And then, of course, they also needed clothes to wear for the contest.

Fortunately, there were a lot of people willing to lend their support. Bobson Clothing Apparel provided the competition costumes (for all five days). Francis Pascasio of Primeline got the fabrics for the Filipiniana costumes (used in the Parade of Nations), while Maxi Cinco created the designs. The day before they left for the US, Pepsi Herrera also proved to be heaven-sent when he lent Rizza several of his gowns. (While they were already in Burbank, Ariel Agasang – then touring the US – just knocked on Ida’s door to tell her that he had his entire collection with him and that Rizza could choose from them.)

A week before their departure, the sponsors eventually came – among them the owners of Funnside Night Club. Robert Pointer also helped, while Mike Chiong tapped Pagcor to get more funds. Of big help, for sure, was Universal Records, which provided all the minus-one used by Rizza and Jed in the competition.

With the funding already there, they only had to worry about one other important thing: their US visas. During their interview at the American Embassy, Rizza – who was traveling to the US for the first time – almost got denied because she got so nervous, all she answered the consul was either "I don’t know" or "I can’t tell." Eventually, her naïve charm worked for her. She got her visa – and so did the rest of the Philippine delegation.

The group finally left on Aug. 3 – with its plane tickets arriving only that afternoon.

(To be concluded)