A few days from now, Filipino athletes go to Cambodia to battle for supremacy in the 32nd Southeast Asian Games.
Some quarters tend to downgrade the regional competition as the lowest in terms of prestige and quality on the international stage, but lest they forget, the SEA Games is the first stage of tests for Southeast Asians aiming for greater glory in the Asian Games and the Olympics.
The SEA Games cannot be disregarded as a mere, regional tournament for how you can gauge an athlete’s readiness for tougher competitions when he or she cannot even excel in this biennial meet or any tournament at the same level.
Prior to the SEA Games, the Philippine Sports Commission promised to back the Filipino athletes with full force, with chairman Richard Bachmann vowing to provide them ample nutrition and allowances given on time.
The Philippine Olympic Committee (POC), the mother organization of the various National Sports Associations (NSAs), has also been exerting efforts in a limited capacity to provide help for the athletes, administratively or otherwise for the Filipino athletes.
The Cambodia SEA Games will officially open on May 6, but there are events like football and chess that will start a few days before the opening ceremonies in Cambodia’s capital of Phom Penh.
But for all the two major stakeholders’ promises, have the athletes benefitted and provided enough to make them battle-ready?
The athletes are known to keep silent and just prefer to focus on training. One athlete went full-time in training, aiming to regain his old form and give the country a gold medal once more in his return to the combat zone.
He has complaints, but he’s not talking. At least not yet. For he prefers to focus first on his training.
Nutrition? Some athletes wonder how food and supplements (vitamins) were provided and to whom?
Team Philippines is aiming to improve on its fourth place finish in last year’s Vietnam SEA Games.
If the athletes perform well, credit goes to the athletes themselves and their coaches, and probably to some NSA officials who genuinely took care of their wards.
The end result of the athletes’ performance in Cambodia will tell a lot about the sincerity of our top sports officials’ claim that they have been taking care of the athletes.
Let’s wait and see but for now, we can only pray for and cheer our athletes in battle.
Mabuhay ang Atletang Filipino!