Aiming high

Never mind the usual top contenders. What’s the medal tally among Southeast Asian nations in the just concluded London Olympics?

Thailand performed best, with two silver medals and a bronze, ranking 57th among all the participants in the medal tally.

Indonesia and Malaysia ranked 63rd overall (alongside Bulgaria, Estonia, Puerto Rico and Taiwan) with a silver and a bronze each.

Singapore placed 75th with two bronze medals. Asia’s financial centers aren’t too big on sports, it seems; Hong Kong won just one bronze, tying for 79th place overall with Afghanistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco and Tajikistan.

But at least they won a medal each. The Philippines, on the other hand, won not a single medal, for the fourth Summer Games in a row. Instead of aiming higher and performing better, we are getting worse.

For many countries, of course, sports development is not a priority, either by choice or simply for sheer lack of resources. Obviously, Olympic performance is also not a gauge of the level of national development.

Ethiopia, long associated with drought, famine and extreme poverty, has won 21 gold medals, seven silvers and 17 bronzes since joining the Olympics in 1956 in Melbourne, Australia.

In our case, I don’t think our dismal performance in the Olympics is due to lack of interest in sports. Filipinos watch international sporting events keenly, and not just American basketball and every bout of Manny Pacquiao.

Since the interest is there, and we surely have more resources than Ethiopia, and we keep participating in the Olympics, we might as well aim to win. We’ll be happy with a medal of any color.

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Except for certain sports such as basketball where physical attributes can give participants a definite advantage, body build should not be a deterrent to excelling in international sports.

When Ethiopia’s two-time Olympic gold medalist Haile Gebreselassie visited Manila in 2010, the thing that most struck me was his unexceptional height and wiry frame. He seemed no bigger or taller than me, yet he won the 10,000-meter event in the 1996 Games in Atlanta and again in Sydney in 2000.

He told me that he trained regularly in their highlands, where the air is thinner and there is greater demand on the body. In populated centers, armed conflict in his country gave him speed, he told me: dodging bullets became a matter of survival. I didn’t think he was entirely joking.

Talking with him, and later reading his story in a book, you will believe that victory in sports has more to do with discipline and a dogged determination to excel than physical attributes.

It probably helps to have someone jumpstart a nation’s harvest of medals and serve as a model for the next generations of athletes.

Ethiopia won no medal when it entered the Olympics in 1956. But in the next Summer Games, in Rome in 1960, Abebe Bikila won the gold in the men’s marathon. Bikila repeated the feat in 1964 in the Tokyo Games. Four years later in Mexico, the Ethiopian torch was passed on to Mamo Wolde.

Just like many boxers in our country who see the sport as their ticket out of poverty, Ethiopians came to regard running for an Olympic medal as their ticket to a better life.

Gebreselassie, who was treated like a rock star in his country after his Olympic wins, became a successful businessman, no doubt further inspiring more Ethiopians to follow in his footsteps.

The rock star treatment received by Pacquiao, and not only in the Philippines, has also inspired budding boxers in our country to aim for world-class performance. It was no coincidence that in the London Games, our best hope for a medal was a boxer.

Our athletes need a role model; someone has to bag that first-ever elusive gold.

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At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, I happened to be on the same plane as some of our participating athletes. They lamented the lack of support for sports development – the kind of support that can see athletes through long periods of absences from school or the workplace to focus on rigorous training.

Athletes in advanced economies can afford to make personal investments in their own training. This is harder for athletes in developing countries, unless they have the determination of Ethiopian runners.

For countries where excelling in international sports is a matter of national pride, government resources are poured into sports development, with recruitment starting in grade school and state benefits extended even to family members.

It is interesting to note that the biggest rivalry in the Olympics has shifted from the US versus the Soviet Union to the US versus China.

In London, the US bested China, 104 against 88 in all medal categories, with 46 golds against China’s 38. Russia came in fourth with 82 medals, 24 of them golds. Host Britain placed third with 65 medals, 29 of them golds. Fifth was South Korea, with 13 gold medals and 28 in total.

Rounding out the top 10 in gold medal rankings were Germany and France with 11 each; Italy and Hungary with eight each; Australia, Japan and Kazakhstan with seven each; the Netherlands, New Zealand and Ukraine with six each; and Cuba with five.

The next Summer Games host, Brazil, placed 22nd overall with 17 medals, three of them golds. Already, some of our athletes who went to London are talking of going to Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

First they have to set their sights high and resolve to win honors for the country. They will need decent support from the government, with assistance from the private sector. The nation has four years to aim for the gold.