Win the gold first before dreaming of the prize

Senator Miriam Santiago and partylist Rep. Mark Aeron Sambar have filed similar bills seeking to give a medal of valor and a guaranteed cash prize of P2 million to the first Filipino athlete to win an Olympic gold medal and every athlete thereafter who does the same.

I appreciate the sense of importance and urgency the two lawmakers have attached to the goal of winning the country’s most elusive sporting prize. But I think the twin proposals will only take us in the wrong direction and farther away from the object of our quest.

Incentives alone cannot replace a real sports program that focuses on disciplines where we have a realistic chance of success. Even the promise of P100 million and a shipload of other prizes cannot assure a bronze if our athletes are poorly trained and our efforts misdirected.

As I have written previously, a check with the Philippine Olympic record would show the only medals we have ever won came from the disciplines of boxing, swimming and athletics, with boxing accounting for most of the medal, including our only two silvers.

I doubt, however, if the natural physical build of the Filipino and the tremendous advances in sports technologies and nutrition will allow us to make an instant (four years to Rio de Janeiro) catch-up in swimming and athletics.

But boxing is an area where the Filipino can truly excel, given the right training and support, as well as the freedom from interference by influence peddlers and the usual meddling from politicians and so-called sports officials.

We mention Rio because that is the immediate goal. But beyond the Olympics of 2016, the Philippines should start from scratch for the future of the country’s sports program. Maybe we cannot go to such extremes as what China does, but we can emulate it part of the way.

In China, we are told, sports programs start from very early in childhood, where small kids who show promise in a particular field are divorced from the parents and taken under the wing of the state.

The state then embarks on single-minded approach of molding these promising youngsters to excel in their chosen disciplines. And they do not send them out to the Olympics half-baked. They train them their whole lifetime for that one single ripe moment at a chosen Olympic date.

It is no wonder then that China is giving the United States a run for its money in the Olympics. And to think China was never the sporting power that it is today. Before, the medal contenders have always been the US, Russia, and the European countries.

And it should not be overlooked, that aside from training and support, many of the other gold-winning countries that are not as rich and powerful as the US or China, are reaping their golden harvests because of their obstinate focus only on the sports where they have real chances.

Classic examples of these are the poor African countries of Ethiopia and Kenya who focus their goals mainly on mid to long distance running, and the Caribbean countries like Jamaica and the Bahamas, who focus on the sprints.

Then there is Cuba with its strong focus on boxing and the Eastern European countries and their focus on field competitions and gymnastics. We cannot apply the shotgun approach on the Olympics by trying our luck on just about any discipline that we fancy for the moment.

The prizes contained in the twin proposals of Santiago and Sambar need not even be legislated. I am sure the goodies will come once we start winning the gold. But first we have to win the gold. And to win the gold, we must not count the chicks before they are hatched.