Bar raised too high

Filipino athletes wrapped up their campaign in the 20th Asian Games with one of their biggest harvests in six decades: Four gold, nine silver and 16 bronze medals.

Surely, everybody knows that it’s a mission accomplished. The best in six decades. A source of pride and joy of sports-loving Filipinos. But if we carefully dissect it, it is way below the expectations of ranking sports officials, who boldly declared before the start of the Games that they are gunning for eight gold medals.

Wait, what… Eight?

Anybody worth his salt knows that winning eight gold medals was impossible to achieve.

Of course, double Olympic gold medalist like Carlos Yulo of gymnastics was an automatic winner while Asian Games record holder Ernest John Obiena of athletics was also sure to deliver.

And shine they did. Yulo won a pair of gold medals in his pet events — vault and floor exercise — while Obiena soared like a phoenix, breaking his own record with a jaw-dropping 5.91-meter performance to retain the title in the men’s pole vault event.

But outside of these two, Team Philippines sputtered.

The Filipinos’ golden hope in world No. 18 Alex Eala realized the degree of difficulty of winning in the Asian Games the hard and painful way when she bowed to Wang Xiyu of China in the semifinals of the women’s singles event. Actually, she was eyeing two gold medals but her campaign with Shaira Rivera in the women’s doubles event was also cut short.

Same goes for reigning champion Gilas Pilipinas and for other favored bets like Olympic boxers Aira Villegas, Nesthy Petecio, and Carlo Paalam, who bowed to a hometown favorite in reigning Asian Championships champion Rui Yamaguchi in the gold medal match.

Other prized athletes like Olympic medalist Kayla Sanchez of swimming, Miguel Tabuena, Bianca Pagdanganan and Rianne Malixi of golf, and Filipino-American rookie Victoria Bossong of athletics also fell short, stepping on the flight home with nothing but sweet memories of their Nagoya stint.

Fortunately for Team Philippines, Jeus Yape pulled off a surprise gold in virtual taekwondo — an event that is making its debut in the Nagoya edition of the Asian Games. If not for Yape’s gold that came three days before the Games came to a close, Team Philippines could have had just three gold medals — one short of matching the performance in the previous editions in Palembang in 2018 and Hangzhou in 2023.

You see, the Asian Games are a different beast. Here, Filipino athletes are competing not just against the best in Asia, but also against the best in the world. You have to be a super athlete — like Yulo and Obiena — to make sure that the gold medal is already in the bag.

That’s why it’s really hard to issue a medal prediction loosely based on the whims of sports officials.

Before making such fearless forecast, the POC should have met all the national sports association leaders to quiz them of their honest-to-goodness projection of their respective campaigns. They should be asking who are your gold-medal potentials? Are they in great shape? Did you give them enough training and foreign exposure with quality coaches and support staff? Do you think they are better than their Asian competitors?

In short, before marching to war and plunging into action, local sports leaders must know the ability of their soldiers, the ruggedness of the terrain, and the prowess of the forces they are facing. They just can’t go to war armed with a marching order based on mere “guess-timate.”

Well, we have nothing against raising the bar too high to push our athletes to strive for greatness. But sometimes, this optimistic approach can also backfire. It can lead to overthinking, pressure and anxiety of being unjustly criticized and bashed on social media if the target wasn’t met.

Ambition is vital, but it must be tethered to reality and matched with all-out support. If our sports leaders want athletes to chase gold, they must first ensure that the safety nets — financially, logistically, and emotionally — are firmly in place.

So, how did they come up with such a bold forecast of eight gold medals? Simple math: Four in Palembang plus four in Hangzhou equals eight.

Yikes!