Saturday, August 23, 2008 Editorials: Medal drought in Olympics
WITH Mary Antoinette Rivero los ing 4-1 to a girl from Croatia in yesterday’s taekwondo preliminaries, Philippine sports officials’ hopes of saving face by salvaging at least a medal in Beijing was totally dashed.
This is the third straight Olympics that Philippines has not won a medal, a long drought by any standards considering that the Games are held once in four years.
One should not take anything away from the heroic effort our athletes poured in Beijing despite being hobbled by many limitations resulting from a skewered sports program and inept sports officialdom.
They should therefore go home with heads held high and welcomed by a grateful public that knows the preparations they went through and the odds they were against.
Where axe should fall
But that may not be true for sports officials who blame everybody else and present twisted rationalizations for every debacle met in major international sports events.
When they come back from Beijing, they should be told to once and for all look at themselves in the mirror and do the next best thing if they have little honor left: resign and make easy any plan to effect a total overhaul of the country’s sports program.
The axe should fall first on officials of amateur boxing; they who not only produced only one Olympic qualifier in a discipline where Filipinos have excelled (think Manny Pacquiao) but also shamed us with their antics against supposed biased judging.
Displeasure
Unfortunately, accepting blame for every sports debacle and resigning is not in the vocabulary of the country’s sports officials who are more often than not recycled politicians or moneyed personalities with the character of politicians.
The situation is not helped any by the structure of sports bodies like in amateur boxing: its head appoints the regional officials who populate congresses that elects the organization head, a dizzying cycle that ensures perpetuity in office of even the inept.
But there must be a way to force these sports officials to own up to their incompetence---like, for starters, Filipinos showing them their displeasure at this most recent Olympics debacle.
