POC focuses on young hopefuls

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Olympic Committee will now concentrate more on young athletes with potentials rather than former medal winners past their prime.

“The way sports is moving now, medalists of two or three Southeast Asian Games ago are no longer shoo-ins in the national team,” said POC president Jose “Peping” Cojuangco Jr. in a radio interview recently.

“In the past, the younger athletes had a hard time making it to the team because the former medalists usually made it there first.

“Now, we will give them equal chances making it to the national team but all of them should earn it first,” he added.

Cojuangco, however, stressed none of them are assured of spots in the Phl squad bound 26th Southeast Asian Games slated Nov. 11-25 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

“We will have all our national athletes appraised each month until we come up with the final roster in the final month before the SEA Games,” said Cojuangco.

He said he will ask POC vice-president Manny Lopez, aquatics chief Mark Joseph, soft tennis president Jeff Tamayo and Philippine Sports commissioner Akiko Thomson to watch over the training of the athletes gearing up for the Jakarta meet.

“We will give them supervised training,” said the former Tarlac Rep.

But first, Cojuangco said the POC will ask all NSAs (national sports associations) fielding teams in Jakarta a list of athletes capable of winning medals.

“We’re asking every NSA a list of athletes which they think are capable of competing in the SEA Games so that we can now start to focus on coming up with an honest-to-goodness training program for our athletes,” he said.

The Filipinos are bracing for what promises to be the biggest SEAG edition with a total of 542 events in 44 sports lined up by the Jakarta SEAG Organizing Committee.

The SEAG Federation Council will finalize the composition in meeting on Feb. 25 in Bali, Indonesia.

The 2007 SEAG in Thailand had 473 events in 43 sports while Vietnam put up 444 events in 42 sports when it hosted the 2003 edition.

The Philippines hosted 393 events in 40 sports in 2005 while Laos staged 372 events in 28 sports in 2009.

The POC also identified the sports that will be played in Jakarta and Palembang, the capital of South Sumatra Province. The distance between the two venues is 1,686 km or 65 minutes by plane.

Football, aquatics, baseball, boxing, gymnastics, petanque, roller skating, sepak takraw, shooting, softball, tennis, soft tennis, beach and indoor volleyball, wall climbing, water skiing, wrestling, fin swimming, cue sports, bridge, chess and weightlifting are set in Jakarta.

In Palembang, it will be badminton, football (championship match), archery, karate, wushu, basketball, judo, bowling, cycling, sailing, canoe-kayak, traditional boat race, equestrian, fencing, futsal, golf, paragliding, pencak silat, kenpo, table tennis, vovinam (a Vietnamese martial art).