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PINOY PRIDE Filipino pole vaulter Ernest John ‘EJ’ Obiena and fencer Samantha Catantan add two of 4 golds for the Philippines on the thirty first Southeast Asian Video games in Hanoi,
Vietnam on Saturday, Might 14, 2022. Obiena broke his personal SEA
Video games report in 2019 after clearing the bar in 5.46 meters.
Catantan reacts after defeating Singapore’s Maxine Jie Xin Wong
within the ultimate of the ladies’s epee particular person fencing. AFP AND
CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS
THE Philippine contingent to the thirty first Southeast Asian Video games in Hanoi, Vietnam went by means of an emotional roller-coaster experience on its solution to bringing house 52 gold medals, 70 silvers and 105 bronzes.
The harvest was far smaller than the bumper crop of 149 golds, 117 silvers and 121 bronzes within the 2019 Video games that we hosted and dominated. However it was good for fourth place, a standing we final had (when the nation was not internet hosting the biennial occasion) in 2003, when the Video games have been, remarkably, additionally performed in Hanoi.
The Video games that simply ended introduced Workforce Philippines to summits of jubilation and depths of heartbreak.
Our world-class athletes didn’t disappoint and supplied a stream of spotlight performances.
Carlos Yulo topped himself king of inventive gymnastics in Hanoi by successful 5 golds and two silvers.
Ernest John “EJ” Obiena defended his pole vault title on the Video games in fashion, hovering over the bar set at a report 5.46 meters.
Olympic champion Hidilyn Diaz dismissed the problem from a Thai Olympian to retain her title within the ladies’s weightlifting 55-kilogram division. We additionally noticed the emergence of one other potential weightlifting star in 18-year-old Vanessa Sarno, who smashed three Video games data on her solution to clinching the gold within the ladies’s 71kg class.
Boxer Eumir Marcial overpowered his opponent from Timor Leste within the males’s middleweight ultimate to efficiently defend his title for the third straight time. Two different Filipino boxers dominated their divisions.
The Philippine staff collected 5 golds, 5 silvers and three bronzes to stamp their supremacy on the dance sport ground.
Billiards was virtually an all-Filipino affair, with the lads’s and girls’s groups crowding out the competitors.
Chloe Isleta grew to become the primary Filipino gold winner in swimming in virtually three many years, taking the ladies’s 200m backstroke occasion. And the ladies’s soccer staff ended a 37-year medal drought within the Video games by beating Myanmar for the bronze.
In a controversy-tainted choice, the muay thai staff was awarded two golds after it protested the factors credited to the Vietnamese squad.
The victories, nevertheless, have been tempered by dramatic defeats and technicalities.
The bodybuilding staff was barred from competing for failing to submit the outcomes of its doping take a look at and for not being accredited by the Asian Bodybuilding Federation.
However the largest disappointment shrouded the Philippines’ beloved sport, basketball.
It started with the lads’s and girls’s staff in 3×3 basketball surrendering the crowns they handily gained in 2019.
However the deepest minimize was dealt by Indonesia, which ended the Philippines’ 33-year reign as Southeast Asia’s basketball superpower by downing Gilas Pilipinas, 85-81, within the males’s championship sport.
The loss was a serious shocker as a result of our basketball groups have been invincible within the area for thus lengthy. That’s about to alter; Indonesia and Thailand have been beefing up their rosters with non-native however eligible gamers.
Gilas coach Vincent “Chot” Reyes readily took the blame for the stinging defeat, however that didn’t cease requires him to resign and to deliver again Tab Baldwin, who had a brief however spectacular stint as Gilas’ bench mentor.
In an unprecedented transfer, Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas’ (SBP) Al Panlilio issued a press release acknowledging that “we fell brief and weren’t in a position to give our groups higher help that they wanted to retain the gold.”
Panlilio promised that “we are going to bounce again and reclaim our spot to remain forward.”
Basketball followers shall be intently watching the SBP’s each transfer, which has only one yr to make the changes earlier than the 2023 Video games opens in Cambodia.
Total, a fourth-place end within the Video games is creditable sufficient, and our athletes deserve the nation’s congratulations and gratitude. Philippine Sports activities Fee Chairman William “Butch” Ramirez says it is nothing to be ashamed of “contemplating the assorted challenges our nationwide athletes needed to face amid the Covid-19 pandemic.”
However the purpose have to be set increased for the Cambodia Video games. Funding must be sourced not just for the athletes’ coaching, however for hiring coaches, airfare and participation in worldwide competitions.
This time, nothing have to be left to likelihood.
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