Monday, September 10, 2007 Rama: Chewing the Cebu City Sports Center fat By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
GETTING the bug twice in as many weeks last month, in return requiring as many visits to a doctor, has recently forced me to finally and seriously contemplate the end of my career as a week-night couch potato.
I kicked my two-packs-a-day smoking habit and a long-standing devotion to San Miguel about three years earlier. However, shooting, being my only sport and because the speed meant in the shooter’s motto “Dilgentia, Vis, Celeritas” doesn’t exactly require a track-star physique, I haven’t really had any incentive to stop watching tee-vee after dinner and letting the fat accumulate by staying in front of the tube until I fall asleep, the show is done, or until my DVD has run out, whichever comes first.
The practice, I’m sad to report, is shared by the missus; she watches girl flicks in the bedroom tube while I got my action/suspense thingies running in the living room set.
So when the doctor finally gave me a clean bill of health, pronouncing the last invading bug dead by Ciprofloxacin, I went to the Cebu City Sports Center for a walk in the track Thursday night and to look up old friends at the Chian Hsi Chuan Internal Arts Society, a group that practices meditation, Chinese martial arts and Tai Chi at the far end of the oval.
I thought that if burning fat in the track and Tai Chi can’t help me shed off the unwanted in my 185-pound girth and kick-start my natural immune system, nothing would.
Flab on the floor. Awareness of the flab in my belly took a backseat to the vision of flabs beneath my foot though as I neared the starting line for my walk around the eight-lane rubberized track. For a moment there, I felt removed from the complex and transplanted to the terra of a bad alien sci-fi movie.
Installed sometime in 1994 for the Palarong Pambansa by a company called Balzam, which is reportedly based in Spain, the multi-million-peso track is decrepit to say the least.
Moisture and air has penetrated into the rubber, causing it to bulge in some parts. Thus, instead of a straight flat rubberized surface, the track has weird reddish-dunes made by the rubber, trapping pockets of air underneath. It’s squishy on the feet as the air is pushed out when one steps on it. Then it makes a barely audible sound as air gets sucked back in when one steps off.
I had read Sun.Star Cebu sportswriter Marian C. Baring’s reports on how much the facility needed an urgent uplift, but I hadn’t realized the severity of the problem until that Thursday night visit.
A report she filed last July 20 said the city government needs to spend P18 million to have the track repaired and P27 million more if the entire complex—the football field, the bleachers and the office spaces underneath—is included.
Innocent question. Decrepit or not though the facility remains the haven for both health buffs and the straggling.
On the track are joggers and brisk walkers. Beside the tracks are Tae Kwon Do jins, karatekas and eskrimadores with their flaming abanico sticks and with them are volleyball players warming up, badminton players practicing their smashes and lovely ladies practicing their cheer-dance.
In the football field are teams practicing set plays deep into the night while, beneath the grandstand, are gymnasts, dancesport athletes and Judoka’s sweating it out in their respective practice venues.
All in all, an estimated 30,000 people use the sports center monthly. In fact, more people come to Cebu City Sports Center than the Rizal Stadium in Manila.
I paid P15 to get to walk the track. If that’s the lowest charge (I surmise one pays more for using the swimming pool), that’s P450,000 a month or P5.4 million a year at an estimate of 30,000 patrons. And that’s minus the income generated from special events, like concerts.
One question—if the facility’s income, from where I suppose the budget for maintenance comes from, can reach millions a year, how did the Cebu City Sports Center come to such a sorry state?
