Politics mirrors sports

The current headline-grabbing issue involving the citizenship of presidential candidate Fernando Poe, Jr., is nothing new to sports. Citizenship has been a gray area (and sore spot for many years now) not just in the Philippines, but more so in the Olympic movement, where prized athletes are given new nationalities at the drop of a hat.

Zola Budd was one of the world’s best middle-distance runners in the world. She was touted as the imminent successor of American Mary Decker, who was the queen of the track in the early 1990’s. The two, however, would never get the chance to meet, since Budd was a South African, and her country was held out of Olympic competition because of its apartheid policy which upheld racial discrimination and resulted in the incarceration of freedom fighter Nelson Mandela for over twenty years.

But all was not lost. Because of her outstanding track record (no pun intended) the teen-aged sensation was miraculously granted British citizenship mere weeks before the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. She would at last get to race against Decker, a poster of whom was plastered on Budd’s bedroom wall. The

hype, even for 1992, was unheard of. Although the time difference between Spain and the US was considerable, the anticipation of their meeting was high.

It turned into one of the biggest tragedies of the sport. The two got their feet tangled early in the race, Decker stumbled, hurt, and a bleeding Budd was hardly able to see where she was going from all the tears in her eyes. Decker never forgave the South African, or England for making her an instant citizen.

Meanwhile, a less celebrated but nonetheless important case surfaced during the next Olympics, in Atlanta. Hakeem Olajuwon was a 6-10 soccer goalie from Lagos, Nigeria. He had never even touched a basketball until he was 17 years old, but nevertheless piqued the interest of scouts from Houston, which was looking for the next big man to succeed Moses Malone. Olajuwon arrived in Houston at a stringbean 180 pounds, but was fattened up on a steady diet of steak, ice cream and weights until he was soon 250 pounds of muscle (also so he would fit Malone’s clothes, which he borrowed in those "lean" months). He was partnered with high-flying guard Clyde Drexler in what became known as the "Phi Slamma Jamma" fraternity at Houston. Luckily for his new hometown, he was drafted by the Houston Rockets, and teamed with 7-4 Virginia product Ralph Sampson, triggering a trend of twin tower frontlines.

In 1996, the NBA and USA Basketball had a big problem. Dream Team II, which featured the likes of Larry Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal, embarrassed themselves with their boorish behavior at the World Men’s Championships, with their trash-talking, crotch-grabbing and chest-bumping. Only Grant Hill and O’Neal were retained in the run-up to Atlanta.

Olajuwon was invited to join the team. However, given the paperwork needed to complete the citizenship requirements, he was only supposed to become an American by September of that year. The Olympic began in July. Olajuwon got a free pass, and the US got a gold medal.

Perhaps the closest comparison there would be to the FPJ case would be Arnold Schwarzenegger. The native of Graz, Austria, was so poor, his family bought its first refrigerator when he was 13. In his early 20’s, he traveled to the United States to seek a better life. With a conniving agent convincing movie producers he was a European Shakespearian actor, he starred in a very bad movie called "Hercules in New York." But Arnie would become a body-building phenomenon. He and Frank Zane were called the world’s most perfectly developed men, splitting Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe titles between them for over a decade. And all this was while Schwarzenegger became a celebrity by declaring that bodybuilding was great for your sex life. Then he became a movie star as Conan the Barbarian. The rest is history.

Schwarzenegger married into the Kennedy clan through broadcaster Maria Shriver. He eventually became an American citizen, and decided to run for governor of California in a recall election, like Ronald Reagan before him. The only difference was that Reagan had become a career politician after his entertainment career. Taken on its own, California would be one of the ten richest countries in the world. But, the argument can be made that Schwarzenegger was only an American in the second half of his life, unlike Poe.

In the past, a decade of government service was enough to be affirmed as a Filipino citizen. What about being a professional athlete, or an entertainer? Are they as important? Legal experts agree that sometimes, the letter of the law and its intent may not exactly be on the same wavelength. Is that the case with FPJ? It’s hard to tell. The STAR ran an editorial last week urging the government to just let FPJ run, even if he is after the highest office in the land. After all, if (and this is the BIG question) we trust our people to be mature enough to vote the right leaders, what would we be afraid of?

* * *

Last Monday, the Subic International Raceway was blazing with the test drive of the new Nissan Sentra. Many members of the motoring media spend the afternoon racing around the track testing its new features, particularly its force displacement device (which keeps the car from pitching forward when you brake at high speed) and the newly-installed gear that greatly reduces shift-shock, or automatic cars’ lurching forward when it shifts gears on its own. This writer was sold.