PSC sets sights on Olympics

We firmly believe that we would be able to carry over the efforts and the energy of the athletes to the Olympics.

Riding the crest of a successful campaign in the recent 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) hopes the same level of performance by the Filipino athletes would carry over to the Tokyo Olympics next year.

Marc Velasco the national training director of the Philippine Sports Institute (PSI), stressed the PSC has its sights now trained at the Olympics with the bid for the SEA Games overall championship over and done with.

And the country winning a record number of medals in the biennial meet, including 149 golds in all to win the overall championship after 14 years, all the more raises the optimism of qualifying more Filipinos to the 2020 Summer Games.

“We firmly believe that we would be able to carry over the efforts and the energy of the athletes to the Olympics. We are still very high on our SEA Games success, so we believe that we would have a big contingent in Tokyo,” said Velasco, who represented Team Philippines chief of mission and PSC chairman William “Butch” Ramirez in Tuesday’s session of the Philippine Sportswriters Association (PSA) Forum at the Amelie Hotel-Manila.

“An Olympic medal is better than a SEA Games medal. So the energy and focus should be shifted there. We need to provide for the athletes and be able to qualify for the Olympics.”

World gymnastic champion Carlos Yulo and pole vaulter EJ Obiena are the two Filipino athletes who already punched a ticket to the Tokyo Games with several more knocking on the Olympic doors, including Rio De Janeiro Games silver medal winner Hidilyn Diaz, judoka Kiyomi Watanabe, skateboarder Margielyn Didal, world boxing champion Nesthy Petecio, World Boxing Championship silver medalist Eumir Marcial, and a few more in athletics, swimming, fencing, golf and taekwondo.

Yulo and other elite athletes were all gold medal winners in this year’s SEA Games, leading the way for the country to win back the overall title it last held in 2005.

The Olympics wasn’t held until three years after the country’s breakthrough championship, but the success did spill to the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar where the Philippine contingent won four gold, six silver and nine bronze medals.

“It was a different scenario in 2005. We didn’t have an Olympic year after that,” added Velasco in the session presented by San Miguel Corp., Braska Restaurant, Amelie Hotel, and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation.