British firm to help RP boxer in Olympic quest

MANILA, Philippines - Will the Philippines bag its first Olympic gold medal in the 2012 Games in London?

With a bit of help from British security solutions giant G4S, the world’s second largest employer after Wal-Mart, the most promising boxer to have come out of the country’s pool of amateur fighters may have a chance.

Charly Suarez, a 21-year-old accounting student from Tagum, Davao del Norte, will be receiving support and training from a team led by two-time Olympic gold medalist and marathon record holder Haile Gebrselassie, G4S global sports ambassador.

Suarez was the country’s most impressive fighter at the AIBA (Amateur International Boxing Association) World Championships in Milan last September.

The 5-foot-6 fighter won the gold medal in the featherweight division in the last Southeast Asian Games in Vientiane, Laos.

The Ethiopian runner gave an inspirational speech Wednesday night at the Forbes Park home of British Ambassador Stephen Lillie, where company executives announced the selection of Suarez for its three-year-old G4S 4teen program.

Under the program, the company selects 14 promising young athletes from 13 countries for developing world-class skills. Suarez replaces a cyclist from Macau, according to G4S group communications director Debbie McGrath.

Five G4S athletes competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with weightlifter Ilin Ilya winning a gold.

G4S announced the selection of Suarez a day after inaugurating its brand-new seven-story offices, G4S House, in Pasig. The company provides security services to several embassies in Metro Manila including the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, Spain, Brazil and Norway, and to top companies including Nestlé and Aboitiz.

The company has been in the Philippines since 2000. It employs 596,000 in 110 countries, 5,000 of them in the Philippines. The sports program is part of its social responsibility projects, which also include landmine clearing in Afghanistan.

Explaining the selection of a boxer for its program in the Philippines, Mike Ross of G4S said, “Boxing and the Philippines go hand in hand.”

Early yesterday morning, several Filipinos were invited to join Gebrselassie in running at the Manila Polo Club in Forbes Park. He left the country last night.

His advice to athletes: “In all sports, the goal is the same. Be an Olympic champion. Be world champion.”

The Philippines has yet to nail the elusive gold medal in the Olympics since it first competed in the quadrennial sports conclave in 1924 in Paris.

It has won nine Olympic medals, five in boxing, two in swimming and two in athletics since 1928 in Amsterdam.

The best that the Philippines has claimed are silver medals, won by boxers Anthony Villanueva in 1964 in Tokyo and Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco in 1996 in Atlanta.