The Sad Plight of Philippine Sports
The Philippines is hosting the 23rd Southeast Asian Games, November 27-December 5, 2005. As expected, the host country boasts of the most number of athletes, 892, with Thailand sending 780 in this bi-annual multi-sports event. Thailand will likely garner the most medals and is expected to receive stiff competition from Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
I can recall our country dominating these events decades ago. Basketball was an automatic gold for the Philippines, while our athletes likewise performed impressively in other games, like track & field, bowling, softball, tennis, among others. Why have we lost those glorious days in sports? Why can't we produce superb athletes like we did in the 80s and early 90s? I guess the reasons are quite obvious. Pitifully, the Philippines is now considered an outcast in SEA, as previous bottom dwellars such sa Malaysia, Indonesia and yes, even Vietnam have immensely improved their respective economic situations. Our poor, local athletes have also been caught in all those political bickerings of their superiors, losing those precious moral, financial and technical support to enable them to train and ably compete against our closest neighbors in sporting events.
To make matters worse, the Philippines has resorted to procuring Fil-American athletes for their respective teams; hence, you will hear athletes like James Younghusband, Phil Greatwich, and San Francisco-based Ali Borromeo playing football for the RP team and Fil-Ams tennisters Cecil Mamiit and Eric Taino. Fortunately, the controversy-laden Philippine basketball team will not be seeing action during these games after FIBA, the ruling body of international basketball, slapped sanctions on the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP). Nowadays, it is not a common sight of Filipino athletes speaking fluent English than Tagalog as most of these Fil-Ams were given 'instant' naturalization papers so they can represent our country in the SEA Games.
Will we ever relive those memorable days in sports? Will we ever see the day when we can again proudly call our athletes as true Filipinos?