ONE of the things that makes the Southeast Asian Games unique is the power of the host to decide what events should be held. It has become such a farce that when Myanmar hosted it three editions ago, the host country included a lot of indigenous sports that only they were experts of.
Events where the hosts are weak are generally ignored like women’s boxing in the previous edition and events where the hosts are strong have added medals.
In previous editions, then Philippine Olympic Committee president Peping Cojuangco expressed his disgust and I share his sentiment. As his sign of protest, he sent a lean team.
Next year, the Philippines will host the SEA Games again and this early, at least according to a veteran journalist, only events where we are assured of winning gold medals will be included.
And that plan, if it pushes through, makes the whole SEA Games one big joke. An international embarrassment that some have derisively called the inter-barangay tournament of international sports.
There has to be some consensus among the SEAG members that all Olympic and Asian level events must be included—chess and billiards are in the Asiad but not in the Olympics—in every edition.
No more of this farce where the big focus is on who wins the medal tally because frankly that’s not the perfect gauge of a succesfull sports program of a country and you need not look for proof further than the country.
We won the overall tally in 2005 when we last hosted the biennial meet and after the euphoria ended, what happened? Did it improve the grassroots sports programs? Did it improve the NSAs? Heck, the exact opposite happened.
We took a nosedive in football and basketball and only improved some five years later; it’s true in the other events, we’ve had one miserable campaign after another and I’m not just talking about the SEA Games.
Why? Because everyone was so focused on winning the medal tally that we forgot everything else.
I hope the organizers of the SEA Games will change their mind and have as many Olympic and Asiad events as possible, regardless of the country’s chances of winning the gold.
Why? If we want to improve or we want to know where we should improve, we should first at least know what we lack and where we can improve. And to do that, you need to compete, first against the best in the region, before going to the next level, Asiad.
Let’s not be too focused on the overall title in the SEA Games. There’s more to sports than that.