Phl athletes scramble for SEAG berths

MANILA, Philippines - With less than six weeks to the 26th SEA Games in Indonesia, a number of national sports associations are still scrambling for inclusion of their athletes to the Philippine delegation.

The deadline for submission of entries by name given by the Indonesian organizers expired last Sept. 30, and yet the local SEA Games secretariat has to fill in a lot of blanks.

“What can we do? This is the problem of the NSAs. Only in the end, it becomes our problem too,” said Philippine delegation chef-de-mission Julian Camacho of wushu yesterday.

He cited billiards, baseball, football, cycling, futsal, gymnastics and table tennis as among the NSAs who have yet to submit their final lineups for the biennial event set Nov. 11 to 22.

Camacho said as of yesterday, they already have 473 names submitted, and it may reach a little over 500 once all the names come in. He said they expect more than 150 officials to join the delegation.

Romeo Magat of tennis, the co-chef-de-mission, said the NSAs had trouble meeting the deadline because of the string of typhoons that hit the country the past week.

“We lost power in a lot of areas. And all communications were down. In some areas there were no internet for a couple of days,” said Magat.

The Philippine delegation officials said they sought an extension of the deadline from Indonesia organizers regarding the submission of the complete and final delegation.

“We sought a motion for reconsideration,” said Magat.

Camacho, however, could not hide his disappointment that the said NSAs failed to meet the deadline when they knew about it right from the start, which was at the beginning of the year.

It’s the biggest SEA Games in history, with 42 sports offering more than 500 gold medals in two separate venues – Palembang and Jakarta.