POC eyes training quarters in Baguio

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine Olympic Committee president Jose Cojuangco is looking at a temporary training center in Baguio City to be used by the athletes competing in the 2013 SEA Games in Myanmar.

“We have facilities there,” said the POC chief yesterday, referring to the country’s summer capital which is more conducive to training.

The weather in Baguio is cooler than any other place in the country throughout the year, with perhaps less pollution and distractions for the athletes as compared to those quartered in Metro Manila.

Cojuangco, however, said they might need a better understanding with the Armed Forces of the Philippines because they may end up using some of the facilities inside the Philippine Military Academy.

There are members of the national pool based in Baguio with their quarters at the Teachers Camp. But once the plan takes off, there will be more athletes staying there.

“We need to forge a better agreement with the AFP and the PMA. I believe the President has just granted them the funds to improve their facilities there,” said Cojuangco, an uncle of President Aquino.

Cojuangco has always batted for the putting up of a new and permanent training center for the national athletes in Pampanga or Tarlac where the Cojuangco family owns huge tracts of land.

But Cojuangco is still in the process of gathering the needed support as well as the funding for such a huge project, and for the meantime he thinks Baguio can serve as the temporary venue.

Cojuangco wants the athletes to train early for the Myanmar SEA Games, where the Philippines will try to improve on its sixth-place finish in Indonesia in 2011.

The POC chief wants to focus on the strength and conditioning as well as the nutrition of the Filipino athletes, and to help them achieve this is his US-based nephew Carlos Sumulong who was in the country recently.

Cojuangco said Sumulong, a strength and conditioning expert, has in principle agreed to help the Filipino athletes for the Myanmar SEA Games, and the next time he comes over he will stay in the country for a longer period of time.

“I asked him when what’s the best time to start, and we agreed that it should be no later than January of 2013. That way we have 10 months to prepare,” said Cojuangco.

While he was here a couple of months ago, Sumulong noticed that Filipino athletes have the tendency to believe that building muscles is the best to do things, and are often confused between bodybuilding and strength and conditioning.

“It’s no longer the case,” said Cojuangco.

“There’s a different approach now to conditioning. You don’t build all those muscles anymore but strengthen your movements depending on your sport.

“Wala na yung malalaki masyado ang mga katawan. Slim and trim na ngayon, and not the athletes you see before,” said Cojuangco who cited Jessica Ennis, Great Britain’s women’s heptathlon winner in the London Olympics.

“You may think she’s not an athlete. I think she’s even shorter that my daughter Mikee (Cojuangco-Jaworski). I also saw swimmers who are very slim and trimmed,” he said.

“And yet she beat them all in events like the shot put, long jump, high jump and hurdles,” he said.