The first batch of the 141-athlete Team Philippines will fly to Manama on 17 October five days ahead of the opening ceremony of the second Asian Youth Games (AYG), according to Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino on Thursday.

The mission, Tolentino said, is to match or surpass the two gold medals that Pauline Lopez of taekwondo and Mia Legaspi of golf had won in the last edition in Nanjing, China in 2013.

“We have strong chances at the gold medals in the combat sports, but we’re not discounting production in other fronts,” said Tolentino, adding that the AYG is the second largest multi-sport competition in the continent after the Asian Games.

The Filipino athletes are competing in 19 of the 26 sports programmed by host Bahrain for the AYG, which started in 2009 in Singapore but were shelved twice in 2017 and 2021 because of the pandemic.

Jiu-jitsu has the most number of athletes with 17, followed by taekwondo with 16 and wrestling with 13 in the AYG where Bahrain included its domestic sport of camel racing as well as beach wrestling.

The Philippines is also competing in volleyball (12), teqball (6), golf (6), triathlon (2), MMA (5), muay (12), athletics (8), boxing (6), cycling (6), weightlifting (6), table tennis (6), badminton (8), beach wrestling (3), aquatics (3), kurash (4) and pencak silat (2).

Tolentino said that in the last AYG meeting in Manama, the hosts announced that 4,250 athletes are competing and will be joined by 900 team and technical officials and 700 coaches.

In organizing the games, the hosts listed 1,200 work force and 300 volunteers as they aim to surpass expectations.

The second batch of athletes, coaches and team officials are flying on 20 October.

China dominated the Nanjing games by winning 71 of the 231 gold medals with Thailand emerging as the best Southeast Asian country with 17 golds, followed by Singapore with 14 and Vietnam five.