RP, Vietnam now on equal footing in arnis

Team Philippines and Vietnam finished with identical three gold medals and three silvers to tie for the overall championship in arnis in the 23rd Southeast Asian Games at the Emilio Aguinaldo College Gym yesterday.

Anna Joy Fernandez accounted for the Philippines’ last gold in the sport when she topped the women’s full contact event by besting Vietnam’s Le Ti Thanh Huyen (silver) and Timor Leste’s Elisabeth Yanti and Almeda Dois Reis (bronze).

Fernandez dropped the first round against Huyen but changed tactics to win the last two rounds — and the match.

Reneto Tunacao, on the other hand, missed giving RP the overall crown when he bowed to Vietnam’s Nguyen Thanh Quyen and settled for silver in the final fight in the men’s side.

The arnis squad fell one short of its projected four gold medal haul as it fell prey to a vastly-improved Vietnamese team.

Still, head coach Rufino Montalbo said he was satisfied with his players’ performance.

"We were just short by one gold but they did their best and that’s good enough for me," Montalbo said.

Tunacao, however, was grossly disappointed with the outcome of his match. The three-time national arnis champion felt that the Vietnamese judge in the contest favored his countryman during the fight.

"My opponent was not the Vietnamese player, it was the Vietnamese judge," Tunacao said. "My performance should speak for itself."— Don Gil Carreon