Palaro cancellation not good for athletes

(The writer, Michael Keon, is consultant for Sports Development of Ilocos Norte, chairman for Luzon, Phil. Taekwondo Association, former Phil. Olympic Committee president and executive director of Project Gintong Alay)

The third postponement of the Palarong Pambansa which in effect is the cancellation of this event for the year 2002 comes as a great shock to us here in Ilocos Norte. This is the second time in succession that this prestigious event has been scrapped. Let me enumerate the damage that this cancellation causes. First, for us here in Ilocos Norte and for those provinces and regions who chose to train early, either individually or collectively, in order to ensure the competitiveness of their athletes have now wasted their money and squandered their meager resources. When you train athletes you train them with the express purpose of peaking them for a particular competition, in this case the Palarong Pambansa. All the training with the subsequent money spent on per diem, food allowance, travel expenses, equipment and tune-up competitions is now wasted. Athletes do not train in a vacuum, athletes train for a specific purpose to compete in a specific event on a specific date. Continuous postponements followed by subsequent cancellation totally disrupts the preparation process and wastes resources.

The second issue is the damage done to the career of the athletes. Once again, take the case of Ilocos Norte who because of winning the overall championship in the IRAA have approximately one hundred athletes chosen to represent Region I to the Palarong Pambansa. All these selected athletes have lost an opportunity of a life-time to represent their region. Multiply this throughout the Philippines (all athletes participating for 13 regions is approximately 8,000) and one realizes that there are thousands of athletes who have lost their opportunity to compete in this prestigious event. But the real damage has been done to those athletes who are in their last year in High School and who by next year would have graduated and gone on to College. These athletes are now ineligible to compete in the Palaro. In the province of Ilocos Norte, we have a number of athletes whose school sporting career was set to culminate in their competing in the Palarong Pambansa. These athletes were peaking in their respective events and looked set to be gold medal potentials but now because of the postponement until next year, these athletes will graduate without the opportunity to fulfill their dreams of attempting to become Palaro champions.