The Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) and Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) vow to keep their lines open for the sake of national athletes competing in major international tournaments.
PSC executive director Paulo Tatad said they would be working together with their POC counterparts so that the incident in which golfer Dottie Ardina competed without proper competition attire in the Paris Olympics will not happen again.
Branded as the “Tapal-gate” with Ardina being seen patching the Philippine flag on her locally-bought competition jersey, the incident rocked the local golf community as it displayed the incompetence of the National Golf Association of the Philippines.
Tatad said they hope it won’t happen again.
“It’s really more of strengthening the communication of the POC, PSC, and the NSAs (national sports associations). Through this committee hearing, we know what are the issues that we need to work on and areas where we can move forward whether on legislative or on the operations side,” Tatad said after the hearing of the Senate Committee on Sports on the “Tapal-gate.”
“So it’s a step-by-step process but eventually we will get there. We have other competitions like the SEA Games, Asian Games, and the next Olympics, we just need to focus on the things that we need to do better and do away with the bad things.”
POC president Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino agrees, saying that their game plan that was built since the Tokyo Olympics will be constantly updated.
With both Ardina and National Golf Association of the Philippines secretary general Bones Floro already forgiving each other, Tolentino said this incident should be studied and asked the athletes for feedback.
“Moving forward, we learn from experience. We can add more from our Olympic game plan,” Tolentino said.
“They both forgave each other. Even in the POC, we learn and maybe, we could have one or two staff members to help out our athletes in the future.”