All good (and bad) things don’t last forever but some people just want to hold on to what they’ve got for as long as they could. Take the case of Philippine Olympic Committee president Peeping este… Peping Cojuangco who has been a permanent fixture in the organization and breezed to his fourth four-year term in the last POC election after boxing’s Rickie Vargas was disqualified, suffering a “technical knockout”. Reason,Vargas failed to attend the committee’s general assemblies. Just recently, Peping got himself into another squabble with the Philippine Sports Commission, whom he accused of meddling. Seen as Peping’s retaliation on PSC Commissioner Ramon Fernandez comment that the Philippines performances in international competition has gone to the dogs was his accusation that the basketball icon was on game-fixing during his Toyota days. Now, Mon is almost certain to file libel charges against the aging, overstaying official. For his part, PSC chair William “Butch” Ramirez said the other commissioners support Mon. So what has Peping done during his tenure? Frankly our performance has dipped. In the 2013 Myanmar Games for instance we ended up seventh, our worst showing ever. Then in Singapore in 2015, we sent a delegation twice the size in Myanmar but still wound up sixth with the same number of medals. It was a hard pill to swallow for passionate athletes like myself that I criticized our habit of getting foreigners with Filipino blood to boost our chances.I also suggested that we scrap our grassroots program since we are not sending the youngsters that we’ve trained. I got the ire of Peping’s cohort who was then at the helm of the PSC. I felt vindicated when the likes of former Gintong Alay head Michael Keon and former PSC executive director Lucring Calo echoed their support. I was also commended by former national athletes for having “balls”. Anyway, the battle isn’t over yet. Butch has crack the whip on NSAs who failed to liquidate a combined P1 billion since the PSC started extending financial support to the different NSAs. The POC itself has unliquidated assistance of P10 million. Butch had given the NSAs until the end of this month to liquidate or face the music. Peping should be saying “Kuwangko (or in English I owe you”).
Since Peping took over in 2004, we just won one silver in Rio courtesy of Hildilyn Diaz but in Beijing (2008) and London (2012) the Philippines laid a big fat egg. As for the Asian Games, we won 4 gold medals in Doha (2006), 3 in Guangzhou (2010) and one in Incheon (2014). If you look at the trend we are nearing zero gold medal in the next Asian Games.
Sporting quotes: “ It aint’ over ‘till the fat lady sings”. Coach Dick Motta of the Washington Bullets, optimistic despite his team trailing two games to one in the 1978 NBA Finals. Motta was right, the Bullets won the series in seven games.
“He can run but he can’t hide”. Joe Louis before his heavyweight title fight against Billy Conn.