BEFORE the year ends, Olympian Mary Joy Tabal and her team will decide whether she will train in Kenya or Italy as part of her preparation for the 29th Southeast Asian (Sea) Games on Aug. 19 to 31 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“We continue to support Joy (Tabal) on her goals. By January next year, we will be processing the requirements for her training and maybe by February she will be out of the country already,” Jonel Borromeo told Sun.Star Cebu during the Motor Ace athletes’ Christmas Party.
Tabal’s longtime coach John Philip Dueñas, for his part, said that the training abroad will last for about two months. “Before she (Tabal) leaves, we will start the training here in Cebu by January and she will continue it abroad,” said Dueñas.
Dueñas said that Italy was referred by the former coach of Tabal in Japan, where the Cebuana trained for the 2016 Rio Olympics last August. Some of the Japanese runners who are aspiring to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are going to train in Italy.
Tabal, however, has to be reinstated to the national team by the Philippine Track and Field Association (Patafa) before she can represent the country in the 2017 Sea Games. An athlete must be a member of the national team for her to qualify as country’s representative in Sea Games.
The 27-year-old Tabal won the silver medal in the women’s marathon of the 2015 Sea Games. She also represented the country in the Rio Olympics and was the first Filipino female runner to qualify and finish a marathon in the Olympics.
But after the Olympics, Tabal was released by Patafa. The two parties had another round of negotiations and that national athletics officials asked Tabal’s camp to submit the training program to them.
“(As of now) I’m not yet reinstated to the national team,” said Tabal, who recently had a four-peat in the 40th Milo Marathon in Iloilo City.
“But the training abroad will still push through. I need international trainings in order to improve my performance and with more international stints I will be able to improve my level of competitiveness. My target is the 2020 Tokyo Olympics,” she said.