Clear statements reflect clear mind

Last week’s column should have been devoted to our continuing discussion on the Canadian “Road to Excellence” (RTE) Business Plan which is designed to bring the Canadians within the top 12 places of medals won in the 2012 London Olympics. We were disseminating best practice from all over the world in the hope that our sports leaders could learn from the Canadian experience in strategic planning as an integral part of sports management and administration.

Stories about the “launching” of the Philippine Institute for Sports (Philsports, which I gather is now being renamed Philippine Sports Institute or PSI for reasons known only to the Philippine Sports Commission. “Strategic” reasons, perhaps?), however distracted us from sharing best practice.

A phalanx of PSC officials later clarified in The STAR that what “is being launched is a new program.” That distinction between the launching of the program and the launching of Philsports (now PSI) was never clearly made by the PSC in the past, until my column of Nov. 18 questioned the so-called launching. And that column was not the first time for over two years that I had said that Philsports already exists. What new initiative then is PSC talking about?

Previous news stories and stories fed to (unsuspecting) sports columnists always emphasized the “new” initiative being taken by the present PSC and that it was an antidote to the sports debacles we have been experiencing in the Olympics and Asian Games. There was no serious effort on the part of PSC to clarify in clear and unmistakable terms that the new programs are being launched to continue what was started years earlier by President Fidel V. Ramos during my incumbency at the PSC from 1995 to 1998.

One thing too that is begging to be clarified is why it took all of 10 years for the present PSC leadership to “resurrect” Philsports when all that time the complex where they were holding office was called Philsports Complex? Didn’t they bother to ask what Philsports is from PSC veterans who could provide the institutional memory and context? 

Why was the Philsports (and the Master Plan for Philippine sports) ignored and consigned to the waste basket all these years despite all our efforts to call the PSC’s attention to its existence and the work that had been done. Would it have been much simpler just to continue the work done earlier and not convert the Philsports (and the Master Plan) into a political or personal issue?

The PSC and its highest leadership said, as an afterthought, that it does not want to claim credit for Philsports and that it is just “after the welfare of the athletes.” Of course, such statements have to be made! What other politically correct statement could PSC make?

It would have been more truthful perhaps to have clearly (and not in obfuscated and truncated ways) said that the present PSC has realized that Philsports does play, as intended by its original founders, a pivotal and strategic role in sports development and that this present PSC administration will extricate Philsports from politics and personal dislike.

If that had been done without obfuscation, as I earlier said, there would have been no need for limp clarifications and I could have devoted this paper’s precious newsprint and ink for more development-oriented matters like sharing best practice. 

I too don’t want to claim credit for anything (especially if I don’t deserve it). I, however, want to make sure that, like authentic sports leaders, we should state historical facts just as we should provide sports stakeholders with truthful reports on all important matters of public interest.

Back to the RTE of Canada. At the time the RTE Business Plan report was released in April 2006, Canada ranked 19th at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games with 12 medals. Based on the work of the Canadian Sports Review Panel, there is optimism that Canada can rebound from its Athens performance to place in the top 15 nations in the total medal count (with 18-20 medals) by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (the Canadian delegation did rebound and finished above the targets set in 2006: tied for 14th place with Spain with 18 medals won in Beijing), and the top 10-12 at the 2012 Olympic Games (with 24-30 medals).

In earlier columns, we had pointed out that 72 percent of respondents were satisfied with Canada’s 18 medals in Beijing. This is to be contrasted with only 59 percent of the respondents being satisfied with the 12 medal-output of Canada in 2004. Just goes to show that everyone loves a winner!

Net week, more on RTE.