The country is fielding a 20-athlete team to the 9th Asian Winter Games that China is hosting for the third time from 7 to 14 February in the winter resort city of Harbin.

Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino said they are determined to emerge victorious to set the stage for the country’s first ever gold medal in the Winter Olympics.

“We’ve already accomplished the dream in the Summer Olympics — three gold medals in consecutive games,” Tolentino said on New Year’s Day.

“And that dream we want to also achieve in the Winter Olympics.”

There are no available accurate records as to how many Filipino winter sports athletes competed in the first eight editions of the Asian Winter Games, but Tolentino believed the team to Harbin should be the biggest thus far.

“And our athletes are competing in six of the 11 sports on the Harbin program,” Tolentino said.

Curling, now one of the most-watched winter sports discipline, will have the most number of athletes in Harbin with 10 in Marc Angelo Pfister, Enrico Gabriel Pfister, Christian Patrick Haller, Alan Beat Frei, Jessica Pfister, Benjo Delarmente, Kathleen Dubberstein, Leilani Dubberstein, Sheila Mariano and Anne Marie Bonache.

The Curling Winter Sports of the Philippines was established late last year to organize the discipline’s ranks with the new group joining Philippine Skating Union and Philippine Ski and Snowboarding Association in the POC roster.

The other members of Team Philippines managed by chef de mission Richard Lim are Paolo Borromeo, Aleksandr Korovin, Cathryn Limketkai, Isabella Marie Gamez and Sofia Lexi Jacqueline Frank in figure skating; Francis Ceccarelli and Talullah Proulx in Alpine skiing; Laetaz Amihan Rabe in freestyle skiing; Peter Joseph Groseclose in short track speed skating and Adrian Tongco in snowboarding.

Weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo won the Philippines’ first Summer Olympics gold medal in Tokyo in 2021 and gymnast Carlos Yulo captured two gold medals in Paris last year, both under Tolentino’s watch at the POC.

“The Winter Olympics are as extremely tough as the Summer Olympics, but we have proven that it could be done,” Tolentino said.

Italy will host the 25th edition of the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo from 6 to 22 February next year.

Sixty-four events will be contested in Harbin, which also hosted the event in 1996, the second time after Changchun in 2007 where China first organized the games.

Japan has been the dominant team in the games, followed by China and Kazakhstan.