Clanging for the future

I am hopeful that swimming would go back to its glory days

I just came back from General Santos City to watch the 1st Speedo Short Course Swimming Championships hosted by my friend and former teammate Martin “Bob” Palacios in his family’s LC5 Resort. With me were my friends in the swimming world like coach Chito Rivero of Jose Rizal University and coach James Guinto of University of Perpetual Help System Dalta.

I went there because I was very eager to see how fast the swimmers in Mindanao are doing these days.

Speedo is really a perfect partner to us in developing swimming in the country and it was very generous enough to provide over 600 medals for the two-day event. The reactions of the kids were priceless.

In my 40 years in swimming, I have never witnessed such appreciation from the swimmers. Mind you, I am not a stranger to winning as well as I have also won over 600 medals throughout my career, so what I witnessed truly touched my heart.

Usually, swimmers step down and took off their medals right after the awarding ceremonies.

Xyxy Chiong (center) as well as Jemeina Pagaran (right) and Collin Solibio are the brightest hopes of Philippine swimming.

But in Gensan, with so much inspiration from the beautifully-minted Speedo medals, the victorious swimmers simply didn’t want to remove them around their necks. They would step into the podium to receive their awards and wear the medals on top of their previous mints.

Then, they would proudly walk around the venue with around eight or more medals hanging around their necks.

It was very touching seeing the future of Philippine swimming full of hope and joy.

I cannot help but remember my younger days dreaming of winning even just a single medal and working so hard to make it a reality. And there, right in front me, the potential champions showed up with a lot of medal.

I remember a similar situation when I was in the 1985 Southeast Asian Games in Thailand.

We were coming home, we were told to wear our medals as soon as our plane lands so we can show it off to members of the media waiting at the arrival gate.

I could still remember hearing the clanging of medals as we walk to the press area. I, too, had won a gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley, but there was no clanging as I only had one event in that edition of the Games. They called me a “one-event wonder.”

But the clanging of medals served as my inspiration.

I told myself that if I could win more than one next time, mine would also be clanging to each other. The clanging sound just became sort of a confirmation that I had won more for my country.

Seeing the swimmers in Mindanao so proud to show off their medals just fills me with hope.

I am hopeful that swimming would go back to its glory days.

I am hopeful that the debacle of not winning a single gold since the 2009 SEA Games would finally end this year.

I am hopeful that the next generation of Filipino swimmers would soon realize that they could bring back more than one gold medal for Philippine swimming.

What I witnessed in Gensan and Mindanao, for that matter, is like striking gold-rich ground — the future champions were everywhere.

There is no denying that we have an abundance of talents here and with partners like Speedo giving support and inspiration to our Filipino swimmers, we would surely harvest tons of gold medals very soon.