PALEMBANG – Wrestling may have failed to reach its 26th Southeast Asian Games target, but the sport’s status as one of the Philippines’ most efficient medal contributors has just been confirmed.
The final day of competitions Thursday saw freestylers Jason Balabal and Jimmy Angana coming up with a bronze each in their respective divisions, bringing the eight-man Philippine grapplers’ haul to two gold, three silver and as many bronze medals.
Interestingly, the output almost approximated an 11-man wrestling crew’s 3-2-4 harvest in the 2009 Laos edition of the biennial meet, giving it a high athlete-to-medal ratio for the second straight SEAG.
Yet Wrestling Association of the Philippines secretary-general Karlo Sevilla remains profuse in his apologies after his squad failed to duplicate its Laos feat.
“We in the WAP thought we could surpass our (Laos) record. Turned out we couldn’t repeat even that. We are sorry,” he said.
Another thing, according to Sevilla, is the challenge WAP and its wards hurled at themselves. “We wanted to show some progress, we tried as best and we failed,” he related.
“We all feel we let our team and the Philippine contingent down.”
Some solace could be had from Margarito Angana’s golden repeat in Greco-Roman (55kg) and Balabal’s successful debut in Greco-Roman (84kg).
Robertson Torres bagged Greco-Roman’s 120kg silver as did Michael Baletin in Greco-Roman 74kg and Roque Mana-ay in the 66kg class. Paulo delos Santos was the other bronze winner through freestyle’s 50kg.
Only Jerry Angana, like Mana-ay a bronze winner in Laos, failed to land a medal. Apodium finish slipped his grasp after he injured his right knee in the course of the freestyle 55kg bouts Wednesday.
Jimmy and Jerry Angana, along with Baletin, Delos Santos and Mana-ay, each in their late-20s or early 30s, are set to retire and would have wanted to end their campaign with a bang, adding to the team’s collective frustration.
“Anyway, this is sports, things happen. We’ll have a new line up next year,” said Sevilla.
And there lies the new challenge.