By Lily O.Ramos
MANILA, (PNA)– The Philippines will send a small number of 208 athletes to the Myanmar Southeast Asian Games in December but they would probably win around 25 gold medals and even surpass the country’s 36-gold output in the 2011 regional biennial meet in Indonesia.
This was the brave pronouncement of Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chair Richie Garcia to sports media on Mondayat the Athletes’Dining Hall at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex at Vito Cruz.
Saying that Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) and the PSC Task Force Committee did a good job in the athletes’ selection, Garcia said that they can even come up with 35 or 40 golds despite the non-inclusion of sports where we are really good at.
”I’m looking at golf, wushu and taekwondo whose players have been training and competing abroad. As long as we send the best athletes they will reap more golds than risk sending around 500 or 600 athletes who may not be as good,” he said.
He isn’t sure about priority athlete and strong chess gold potential Wesley So who is now studying finance in Webster University in the US.scholarship.
“The National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) should have taken care of him on matters of his participation in the Universiade where he was the champion.
“The POC does not approve of his stint there so we at the PSC can’t reward him or recognize his feat there. If he can’t go to the SEA Games, what can we do?”
In another matter, Garcia said he is willing to finance through the PSC a year-round tournament for women’s basketball to find talents who will play for the country in the SEAG, Asiad or the Olympics by next year.
This should lift the spirit of girls who have been dreaming of having a league of their own in hoopdom which is getting very popular in many countries like the US, Japan, Korea and Europe.