PALEMBANG, Indonesia – As the commercial goes, they both faced off in the finals.
Rubilen Amit, the 2010 world 10-ball champion who won the 8-ball and 9-ball gold medals in the 2009 Laos Southeast Asian Games, had come here to retain those titles and affirm her superiority as the holder of all three titles.
It wasn’t to be the case. The woman who eventually challenged her for the honor was compatriot Iris Ranola, who beat her, 7-2, in an all Filipino final to become the billiards teams new double gold medalist.
But winning over her more illustrious opponent was not too sweet for Ranola.
“I really felt bad having a 6-1 lead over her. In fact, I wanted her to get back into the game and I really felt it when I hit the 2-9 on the fifth rack,” she said.
Then she was upbeat anew.
“Watch out for Bengkay (Iris) in the coming tournament,” she said.
The gold was the third after the 8-ball gold medals by world No. 1 Dennis Orcollo and Iris Ranola. The 9-ball silver and the carom singles silver-bronze medal finish by Francisco dela Cruz and Efren “Bata” Reyes completed the 3-2-1 gold-silver-bronze medal finish by the Filipinos, an improvement over the 3-1-2 haul in the 2009 Laos SEA Games.
Dela Cruz averted an all-Vietnam finale in the carom ball event, but went down fighting the last Vietnamese standing and settled for the silver Wednesday night in the six-man knockout competition.
The 52-year-old dela Cruz ousted Vietnamese Nguyen Thanh Long, 84-74, in the lower semifinal bracket. That could have set him up for an all-Filipino title clash with Reyes, but the latter fell to Vietnamese Ma Minh Cam, 100-70, and took the bronze.
The Vietnamese went on to beat dela Cruz by the same score to win the gold.
The pair of Rodolfo Diaz and Alvin Barbero bowed to Myanmar, 53-45, 54-39, 64-37, in the quarterfinal round of seven-team doubles won by Malaysia over Singapore.