Phl deploys big delegation

A total of 1,868 delegates composed of 1,115 athletes and 753 coaches and officials will represent the home team.

The Philippines will parade the biggest delegation when the 30th Southeast Asian Games fire off on 30 November at the Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan.

A total of 1,868 delegates composed of 1,115 athletes and 753 coaches and officials will represent the home team in the biggest, most prestigious athletic conclave in the region.

Indonesia, the host of the Asian Games last year, will field 1,702 delegates while tiny Singapore made a shocking move of deploying a contingent of 1,591 athletes and officials.

Powerhouse Thailand will field a delegation of 1,473 while Malaysia and Myanmar have teams composed of 1,076 and 952 delegates, respectively.

The Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee (Phisgoc), however, stressed that the final number of entries would still go down in the delegation registration meeting on 19 November.

The Philippines is eyeing to corner the lion’s share of the 530 gold medals in 56 sports to land at least on the top three of the overall medal tally.

Philippine Sports Commission William “Butch” Ramirez said he is optimistic that the Nationals will pull off a surprise to duplicate the “Miracle of Manila” in which they won 113 gold medals to clinch the overall title in the country’s previous hosting of the biennial meet in 2005.

In fact, based on his initial assessment, national athletes could win at least 90 to 100 gold medals.

Ramirez said the PSC board of commissioners had approved all financial requests for the exposures and training of all the SEA Games-bound athletes to prepare them well for the biennial games.

“The PSC spent for all the training, especially the foreign exposures of the athletes for the SEA Games,” Ramirez said. “We hope to find Olympic-grade athletes from them as well as the Tokyo Games are also just around the corner.

Meanwhile, former Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Jose Peping Cojuangco felt slighted by a statement made by a Malaysian sport leader insinuating that the Philippines used its home court advantage to win the overall championship in 2005.

Cojuangco, who was the POC president at that time, challenged the Malaysian official to prove his allegation.