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Sunday, November 27, 2005
15 gold medals set for first day of SEA Games
MANILA -- Long jumpers, Latin dancers and chess and billiard players will be among those carting off gold medals Sunday after the first full day of competition at the 23rd Southeast Asian (SEA) Games.
Hours before the symbolic Games torch is lit and the competition is officially opened by Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the Luneta grandstand in downtown Manila, the first of three golds in athletics will be held in the women's long jump.
Filipino Olympian Lerma Gabito is one of the favorites in the long jump at the newly renovated Rizal Memorial athletics stadium, where the women's pole vault and high jump finals will also be held.
They are three of 15 gold medals to be awarded Sunday.
Diving gold medals will also be awarded in the women's 3-meter synchronized springboard and the men's 10-meter synchronized platform and 1-meter springboard in suburban Laguna.
At Laguna, Singapore picked up the first gold medal of the competition Friday by winning the men's water polo competition while Philippines and Malaysia took silver and bronze, respectively.
The Philippines is expecting a strong follow up to its six-medal diving performance--two of each color--when the Games were last held in Vietnam in 2003. Olympian Zardo Momenios will lead the host team, which has just returned from a five-month training camp in China.
"We're looking at four gold medals this time, or maybe more," said Philippine diving official Evan Alvia. There are 10 diving gold medals on offer.
The 15-ball billiards event will also see a gold medal awarded, along with golds at the standard and Latin events in the dance sport competition at Cebu City. Four gold medals in karate--the men's and women's kumite and kata events, and two in the "blitz" chess event, close out the first-day medals.
The Southeast Asian Games will have its version of Super Sunday on the penultimate day of the competition--Dec. 4--when 100 gold medals will be awarded, nearly one-quarter of the 439 offered.
When the Philippines last hosted the SEA Games in 1991, it won nine of 20 gold medals and led after the first day. It was eventually overtaken by Indonesia, which took the overall title, and another close race is expected this year.
In soccer matches Saturday, Sakpiawan Sinaga's 64th-minute goal gave Indonesia a 1-0 win over Vietnam at Bacolod on the central island of Negros. Fazrul Nawas scored in the fifth minute to give Singapore a 1-0 win over Laos in another Group B game.
Security took priority in the area around the Luneta grandstand where more than 300,000 are expected to witness a procession-style opening ceremony Sunday.
Antoinette Rivera, who competed in taekwondo for the Philippines at last year's Athens Olympics, is scheduled to carry the torch up to the grandstand to light the Games cauldron.
Manila's already chaotic traffic was made worse Saturday when police closed roads around the grandstand to secure the area. More than 17,000 police and security forces went on alert in Manila last week--officials are concerned over recent deadly attacks by the communist New People's Army rebels in central and northern Philippines.
Al-Qaida-linked militants, including the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf group and Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah, also are active in the country.
With the Philippines' most popular sport-basketball--being a late scratch in the schedule due to a conflict over hosting rights - the number of sports has been reduced to 39 in the 11-country regional competition involving more than 5,300 athletes. (AP)
(November 27, 2005 issue)
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