What the luck

CEBu, Philippines — Alex Eala and EJ Obiena had fun lip rapping with their Asian Games medals. Adorable collaboration. Wholesome. Never mind the brothers whose trashy video with a woman averse to fabric just turned their medals into scrap. Wholesale. Like crap.

The tennis ace and the vault phenom combined is sports royalty. Both invaded the never before territory. Obiena won a silver and a bronze in the worlds, Alex reached the fourth round of the grandest of all slams and is currently ranked world number 18.

In the last Asiad, Obiena won his tenth gold medal of the season and rewrote his continental record. Eala may have disappointed many with her semi-final loss to a lower-ranked Chinese, but she is more admired for choosing to play for flag, risked losing ranking points and paying thousands of dollars in penalty.

Both are towering and well-chiseled, like models. Eala stuns when dolled-up, but is more disarming with her raw beauty and power. More than that, both are well-behaved and well-spoken. The ideal representatives of a people unworthy of representation. A double treat to a country unjustly mistreated. Living dead or dying alive. Double dead.

While both are articulate, two of the men’s volleyball standouts somehow muted them. Bryan Bagunas opened up an old wound in Philippine sports, the lack of financial support. The team captain laments they have not received their allowances at least two months prior to the Asiad like they were prepared for a hunger summit.

Some of them had to borrow money to train for a moneyed but plundered country. Unimpeded by his gender identity and expression in a sport of strength and power, height, might and flight, the out and proud Josh Ybañez outed their financial woes but said it was not an excuse for their near winless campaign. It is not. The country knows their sacrifices, except sports officials who outnumber the athletes in the delegation. That wound never heals, it only cuts deeper.

If it were to heal, this country should nurture their athletes the way it enables and defends its plunderers. It is lucky a Manny Pacquiao was born who became pound for pound king, not because his government motivated him, his poverty did. Still lucky an EJ Obiena was born, only to be dropped from the national team over false accusation of falsified liquidation. Almost. It already lost Wesley So over an incentive dispute, in time another will follow suit. If not an athlete, it is a piece of sovereignty over a territorial dispute. Or both. And more.