SCOOP to fete Olympians, legends

Two Filipino Olympic silver medalists, the country’s two oldest-surviving Olympians and another tandem of former world champions are among the Summer Games campaigners who will be honored during the SCOOP Awards rites Thursday at the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club in Mandaluyong City

Anthony Villanueva, runner-up in the featherweight division in boxing in the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad, and Mansueto "Onyok" Velasco, who repeated the feat in the light-fly class three decades and two years later in Atlanta, head the list of 11 Olympians to receive the "Lifetime Achievement Award," the highest honor to be given by the Sports Communicators Organization of the Philippines.

Felipe Nunag, another boxer, and cager Charles Borck, the only two survivors of the 1936 Berlin Games, will receive special recognition.

Borck is a member of the 1936 national basketball squad that finished fifth, still the highest by any Asian country in the Games.

Borck, 90, now based in Las Vegas, Nevada, will most likely miss the occasion, same with Nunag, whose whereabouts cannot be determined up to press time.

Strongman Salvador del Rosario, who won the flyweight gold medal in the 1972 world weightlifting championships, and marksman Jethro Dionisio, the only man so far to be crowned world speed shooting champion three times, are also among the prominent figures expected to grace the occasion supported by the Philippine Sports Commission, San Miguel Corp., Nestle, Milo, and the Philippine Olympic Committee.

Olympic silver medalists Teofilo Yldefonso in swimming, Simeon Toribio and Miguel White in athletics, and Jose "Cely" Villanueva, Leopoldo Serrantes and Roel Velasco, all in boxing, will, likewise, be honored with the "Lifetime Achievement Award."

Also in this category are Arianne Cerdena, gold medalist in demonstration sport bowling in 1988 in Seoul, and Stephen Fernandez and Beatriz Lucero, both bronze medal winners in exhibition event taekwondo in 1992 in Barcelona.

Other Filipino sports legends invited to the affair, the biggest ever gathering of local sporting greats, are basketball’s "Big Difference" Carlos Loyzaga, former Senator Robert Jaworski, former Asian sprint queens Lydia de Vega-Mercado and Mona Sulaiman, 1991 Southeast Asian Games standout and former PSC chair Eric Buhain and Art Macapagal and Rafael Hechanova, president and chair, respectively of POA.