CHENGDU, China — Raph Trinidad and Eric Ordonez made it look easy to barge into the semifinals of the water events in the 2025 World Games at the Sancha Lake Arena on Friday here.
Trinidad, the flag bearer for the proud Philippine team in the opening ceremonies Thursday night, carried out a splendid per-formance in the cable wakeboard event, scoring 80.20 points to dominate his heat and land third among the 10 qualified athletes to the semis set Saturday at the same venue.
Max Milde and Germany (83 points) and Loic Deschaux of France (80.40) topped the qualification round that saw the partici-pants do tricks while being pulled by a cable system above.
It is in the same principle, albeit being dragged by a motorboat, that Ordonez did his routine and earned the nods of the judges to qualify for the semis after registering 36.67 points in wake surf.
Supported by the Philippine Olympic Committee and the Philippine Sports Commission, Ordonez is expected to turn up the tempo and give top athletes Jett Lambert of USA (83.75) and BM Jomboon of Thailand (80) a run for their money.
Wong struggles in taijiquan
Meanwhile, Agatha Wong placed eighth out of the nine participants with one event left in women’s taolu at the Hi-Tech Zone Sports Centre on Friday.
Wong, a five-time Southeast Asian Games champion, earned 9.160 points in taijiquan or bare hands and will now try her best to perform well in taijijian or sword in the evening contest set at 7:50 p.m.
The medalists will be determined after combining the scores in the two wushu practices.
Zhuoling Lu of host nation China topped taijiquan with 9.796 points, while Zeanne Law of Singapore (9.740) and Basma Lachkar (9.720) followed suit.
Also competing in the evening is wushu bet Jones Llabres Inso.
