A disturbing trend

I hate to say it, but there is a disturbing trend in sports that may gradually (or immediately) erode the foundation of everything we value in the sporting community, a disease that has been raising its ugly head every couple of years, threatening to young people who want to be athletes.

It is the continuing spat between the Philippine Sports Commission and the Philippine Olympic Committee. I honestly cannot see how either of these entities get anything done given their penchant for press releases and putting each other down. It has grown beyond disturbing, to downright disgusting.

If you look at the countries participating in the Olympic movement, you’ll notice that only a small percent win gold medals, somewhere around ten percent. Among all the successful countries in the Olympic movement, the line practically goes straight down the middle between National Olympic Committees (NOC’s) that are entirely private or entirely run by governments. They are either perfect democracies or totalitarian regimes. There has never been a country that is a hybrid. Either the NOC is sustained by private donors and sponsors and marketing (like the United States), or it is dictated to militaristically by the ruling government (like China or the former Soviet Union, both very successful in international sports).

Sadly, the Philippines is both. The Philippine Olympic Committee is private, while the Philippine Sports Commission is public. The POC governs the national sports associations; the PSC holds the government funds. And that’s the problem.

Many national sports associations are fiefdoms run by long-standing leaders who are often absent from the association’s own affairs. I personally witnessed this when I ran a website that featured only Philippine sports only three years ago. I wrote over forty letters to the various NSA’s, informing them that there was now a platform for them to announce their schedules and upcoming competitions. It took my messenger a whole week just to hand in the letters, simply because, most of the time, there was nobody at the different NSA’s in Rizal Memorial Sports Complex. At the end of it all, only two responded. If that is the state of the NSA’s, then what is the state of the POC, which is made up of those very same organizations?

The PSC, meanwhile, is the brainchild of former senator and now Interior Secretary Joey Lina. It was designed to draft policy to guide the country’s grassroots and elite sports programs. It was not envisioned to become a giant piggy bank, which it has devolved into.

What have these two organizations wrought?

Let’s check the facts. Since 1990, the Philippines has spent over a billion pesos and not won a single Olympic gold medal (save for the bowling gold of Arianne Cerdeña back in Seoul in 1988, which did not count in the medal standings). We have not built any major sports facilities worthy of staging an international meet like the SEA Games (which is fast approaching, but that’s another horror story). We are still using the Rizal Memorial Complex, which was built even before Manuel Quezon was president of this country. Since the POC and PSC are so intent on having their say about Philippine sports, then it is only proper that they also share in the responsibility for this vacuum. And what of the untold millions in grants given individual sports that have either gone wasted or unaccounted for? What of the hundreds of millions that have supposedly gone into the coffers of both organizations since they began their tug-of-war in 1990? What of the moneys from the 1991 Manila SEA Games and World Chess Olympiad? Have they been accounted for by the COA?

Let’s look at the accomplishments of the two superbodies further. What has the PSC accomplished under the current regime of former champion athlete Eric Buhain? Given the inordinate amount of time he spends in front of the media, not to mention the constant reminder of his long-gone glory days as an athlete in posters for their fund-raising events, you would think he has changed things. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Some of his underlings have even reportedly hinted of sanctions against athletes and coaches who complained to media members who were not "friendly" to his administration. And what of the plight of swimmer Lizza Danila, who has been sent home from her studies in Australia because the remittances of the PSC were not sent in time? The young lady has reportedly been undergoing psychiatric treatment for the subsequent trauma. If all this is true, then what hath the PSC wrought?

Let’s take a capsule look at the POC now. Last year, the International Olympic Committee struck fourteen sports off its list of applicants for inclusion as medal sports into the Games. Among these were bowling, billiards and ballroom dancing. And yet, the POC staunchly supports ballroom dancing, to the extent of letting the DanceSport Council of the Philippines hold competitions at the PhilSports Arena, where the sharp, high-heeled shoes of participants damage the expensive floor of the basketball court, clearly something it was not meant to take. One of the arguments against the sport is that most of the world-ranked pairs come from different countries. Should they ever be included in the Olympics, whose country would the medals go to, the male dancer’s or the female’s? And yet, this is a sport that receives more attention than ice skating, which has consistently brought honor to the Philippines despite getting crumbs.

Eleven years ago, eight hundred delegates flocked to Teachers Camp in Baguio city to draft a Covenant for Philippine Sports. President Fidel Ramos visited not just once, but twice, to make sure the agreements were being drafted properly. Heads of delegation and lawyers spent four sleepless nights consulting with athletes, coaches, legislators and educators in the hope of charting a clear, productive course for Philippine sports. Over thirty agreements received a standing ovation from all parties concerned. Yet a second and third sports summit (which did not include many of the original participants) failed to improve upon the original manifesto. And how much of it was ever implemented? What happened to the hope of all the members of Philippine sports’s family?

And the PSC and POC have the temerity to start a turf war less than six months from the Vietnam SEA Games? If they aren’t ready now, when the heck will they be? And when in the world are they going to stop acting like children and squealing to Malacañang or, heaven forbid, the media, just to have their say?