Friday, August 15, 2008 Malilong: Thank God for Michael Phelps By Frank Malilong The Other Side
MAYOR Tomas Osmeña should not be faulted for carrying a gun to a picket line. He was informed via a phone call of an imminent threat to peace and he wanted to handle the situation personally. You can’t begrudge him for that and for arming himself for protection. After all, this is his city and he is responsible for its peace and order.
But how often should a mayor play policeman without sacrificing his other equally important functions? Would he have rushed to, say, the Pasil public market if somebody had called him that a group of vendors was being threatened against entering the stalls?
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The lone Filipino boxer in the Beijing Olympics went down in defeat bringing with him our only realistic hope of ending a twelve-year medal drought in the sporting world’s greatest show on earth.
In the past, events like this made me chafe but guess what, this year I don’t feel anything at all, not even envy of our Southeast Asian neighbors whose athletes are performing decently on the world stage.
After an eternity of heartaches, I have learned to manage my expectations. In fact, had I been to their send-off, I would have told our contingent that what was important was not whether they got beaten or vanquished but how they lost the game.
If our athletes had so far not failed my expectations, neither had, in the opposite sense, Michael Phelps the world’s. As of yesterday, the jug-eared American swimmer had broken five world records en route to winning five gold medals and is well on his way to becoming the face--not Kobe Bryant’s or Lebron James’--that the 2008 Olympics will be remembered for.
So dominating has he been that a Korean runner-up conceded that racing with Phelps was already an honor. A Russian rival joked that Phelps came from another planet, a claim that was disputed by British swimmer Simon Burnett, who said that Phelps was in fact from the future sent back by his father in a time machine.
The thing about Phelps, apart from his enormous talent and despite of it, is his demeanor. During the awards ceremony of the 200 butterfly race, when the TV cameras were focused on the gold medalist, they showed an almost somber-looking face looking at his country’s flag while its national anthem was being played. The scene immediately brought to mind the image of USA Redeem Team member Chris Bosh and the inflated bubble gum hanging from his mouth while the “Star Spangled Banner” was played before the USA-China game.
(It also reminded me of the Filipno boxer with the American moniker who wiped the sweat off his forehead with the Filipino flag while our anthem was playing before his match at the Cebu City Sports Center.)
In this era of bloated egos and buffoonery, thank God for Michael Phelps.
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I just read this from the Los Angeles Times: the proposed Manny Pacquiao-Oscar de la Hoya fight is off. Reason: they can’t agree on the sharing of the purse.
De la Hoya offered a 70-30 sharing but Pacquiao wants his share raised to 40 percent. When the American’s camp refused, Pacquiao called the negotiations off, according to the Times.
The recently crowned Filipino lightweight king would have earned between $9 million to $10 million had he accepted the proposed financial terms for his fight with the aging but still popular de la Hoya.
With that amount of money involved, I wouldn’t be surprised if the negotiations are resumed sooner than you can say, “wait.”
