Mendoza: Assessing our Asiad gold harvest

THE Asian Games is now in full blast after its grand opening on Aug. 18 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

An estimated 12,000 or so athletes are competing in a total of 462 events during the two-week tiff of Asia’s own version of the Olympic Games.

We’ve all been virtually glued on TV watching the Asiad highlights, the commitment extending up to Sept. 2 in Asia’s second most populous country next only to China (1.4 billion people).

And now the main question: How would we possibly fare in this most challenging of competitions among Asian countries?

Definitely, our chances of emerging No. 5 or No. 10 in the 45-nation meet are both nil and none. To even finish in the Top 12 is tantamount to saying the parting of the Red Sea could still happen today.

It’s painful but it would be an illusion to even think we could win five gold medals. What’s this, an inter-barangay meet?

So tough has competition become that we could hardly even win one gold medal in the last three editions of the quadrennial event.

The las time I covered the Asiad in the 2002 Busan Games, we barely eked out two golds in bowling and equestrian.

We struggled afterwards in 2006 and 2010 before we bagged, mercifully, a lone gold in Incheon 2014 through, of all disciplines, BMX, courtesy of cyclist Daniel Caluag.

We are playing in 40 of a total 462 events in our uninterrupted attendance beginning with the first Asian Games in New Delhi, India, in 1951.

China has been the perennial champ, dominating the last Asiad with 151 golds out of 349 staked in the Asiad’s 17th edition.

We almost won four golds in Incheon as we settled for three silvers to go with 11 bronzes.

Can Hidilyn Diaz, our weightlifting silver winner in the 2016 Rio Olympics, win the Asiad gold this time? Maybe. Her Chinese tormentor in Rio has retired.

And, inspired no end by their 96-59 rout of Kazakhstan on Aug. 16, our cagers face China on Aug. 21. Can Jordan Clarkson spell the difference for us? A tough call.

A basketball bronze would be more than enough, a silver a miracle. A gold as impossible as Digong’s dream to abdicate his throne.