Meet the lone Filipino esports Olympian

MANILA, Philippines — When the Olympic Esports Series (OES) was first announced, Filipino racer Iñigo Anton was surprised to see that motor sport was included as one of the events.

"I was actually surprised that motor sport was part of it because they don't have it in the real Olympics. It's something that people are adapting to," Anton told Philstar.com.

Anton is the son of multi-titled racer Carlos Anton and is currently part of racing teams Motul and Obengers Racing. He is considered one of the most decorated Filipino racers, having started racing when he was just eight years old. He has participated in and is leading the Formula V1 challenge this year, and has been named Driver of the Year in Circuit Racing by the Automobile Association of the Philippines (AAP).

"I'm under contract with my racing teams, luckily I was still able to continue my real-life racing, I just had to make time for both," said Anton.

Upon the announcement of the OES, the AAP hosted a private qualifier for the top sim (shortened from simulated) racers in the country. As Anton recalled, it was all done in one day, with racers hoping to get in their best time to qualify for OES in Singapore.

"By the last hour, I was able to snatch the best time by about 0.07 of a second, which if you would think about is nothing but I was extremely grateful that I managed to take that lap, which sent me to Singapore," said Anton.

But Anton knew that things weren't going to get easier just because he had his ticket to Singapore.

"After I qualified for my country, I knew it would be so tough to make it to the final 12 because I will be up against sim racers from top nations in the world. The interesting thing about me is that I'm a professional sim racer but I haven't specialized in Grand Turismo so it was something I had to adapt and learn in a span of two months. Luckily, I was able to get used to track and car," he explained.

Out of 30 countries that had qualified for the OES' motor sport event, Anton had to beat more than half of his fellow racers to make it to the final 12.

He added: "We only had four laps to get in our best time and if we crashed out or invalidated our lap then that meant we were out of the race. So there was huge pressure and [it was very] stressful [to complete a lap]. I knew I couldn't make a mistake. I managed to qualify at 11th place by a tenth of a second. It was only by these little margins that I was able to get in and I'm so grateful that all the practice that I was doing for the past two months paid off."

Even though Anton was used to feeling the G-force when he raced in real life, he treated sim racing just as he would prepare for an actual race.

"I realized I should treat everything the same way as I treat real life racing because it's having that proper mentality that you want to train, you want to win, it's the same feeling that I get in sim racing. I may not feel the G-force that you would feel in a real race car but through the simulator you can still feel how the car reacts with just the steering wheel and pedal. People say it's just a video game but it's really close to reality already. One thing that's nice about motor sport is what I have learned from sim racing I can apply in real life racing," shared Anton.

Though Anton finished OES at 11th place, he is very grateful for the experience and the light it has shone on both racing and sim racing.

"Compared to other countries, racing is still such a small community here in the Philippines but you know it's continually growing and it's nice to see sim racing actually offer a gateway to real-life racing. We've seen some sim drivers start to compete in actual real life racing events. It's just continually evolving. With real-life racing, budget is always an issue. It's a very expensive sport.

With sim racing, it helps make the community grow and I know a lot of kids really love playing racing games and they can realize that this can actually translate into real life racing. It's an interconnected community and it's something that even if you play it as a video game, it can translate to real-life things. With the digital age right now, it's something we can take advantage of and can grow our racing community," said Anton.