PSC Hall of Fame: Chief Justice graces rites

MANILA, Philippines - Chief Justice Reynato Puno will be the guest of honor in the ceremony marking the enshrinement of 10 Filipino sporting greats to the Philippine Sports Hall of Fame on May 5 at the Maynilad Hall of the Manila Hotel.

Puno, who is set to retire from his post on May 17, was the choice of the Hall of Fame organizing committee headed by Arturo Macapagal of the Philippine Olympians Association and Philippine Sports Commission chair Harry Angping.

“He is a good speaker and apolitical,” Angping said of Puno, the 23rd person to serve as Chief Justice.

Leading the first batch of inductees to the Hall of Fame are late boxing greats Gabriel “Flash” Elorde, Francisco “Pancho Villa” Guilledo, Ceferino Garcia and Jose “Cely” Villanueva and his son Anthony Villanueva.

Also getting the nod of the screening committee composed of a select group of veteran sportswriters are Olympians Miguel White, Simeon Toribio, Teofilo Yldefonso and Carlos Loyzaga and the Philippine Team that won bronze in the 1954 World Basketball Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Some of the awardees like Loyzaga and Villanueva and members of the basketball team are still around and may attend the induction ceremony.

Elorde (junior lightweight), Guilledo (flyweight) and Garcia (middleweight) held world boxing titles at the height of their careers.

Jose “Cely” Villanueva captured the country’s first Olympic medal in boxing - a bronze in the 1932 Los Angeles Games.

His son, Anthony, took the country’s first Olympic silver medal in the featherweight division in the 1964 Tokyo Games, an effort matched 32 years later by another boxer, Mansueto Velasco.

The country’s first Olympic hero, Yldefonso won two Olympic bronze medals, a feat no Filipino athlete has matched. Yldefonso won the 200m breaststroke bronze medals in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and the 1932 Games in Los Angeles.

Like Cely Villanueva and Yldefonso, Toribio gifted the country with a bronze medal in men’s long jump in the 1932 Games. White snared the bronze in the men’s 400-m hurdles in the 1936 Berlin Games.