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Why we broke at the Olympics

August 25, 2008

Our failure at the Beijing Summer Olympics has received differing reactions both across the mainstream media and the blogosphere, prominent views amongst them are those which express dismay and blame the athletes for being either too confident or underestimating to the significance of rigorous practice.

Mind me, sports in the Philippines really took a dwindling status since the day it became one of the avenues of politicking including public relations, promotion of personalities, betting and gambling, and electioneering. Sports is being used as an instrument of blowing the egos of politicos stuffin’ our athletes with promises of material wealth and yes, for the love of money everything became commercialized from basketball to boxing, the reason why the Philippines cannot erect a monument of prominence in the world of the best sporting nations.

On Solar Sports I watched a teary athlete from our Olympic contingent complain that he was not given enough attention during his preparations. It is true that they were trained just months before the Games (Philippines Sports Commission Chairman Butch Ramirez admitted it), something quite portending of the results when compared to countries whose athletes had already been training for the events more than three years earlier. Worse, the Olympian said that he practiced in irregular periods with non-permanent trainors and monitormen, reflecting the situation of our delegates whose needs in the field were not given immediate support. They were treated insignificantly and left to themselves like hens expected to lay golden eggs after some time. Our strategies are very far from other nations’ which study with close scrutiny the performance of their players during practice, providing proper recommendations and additional facilities to improve them whenever necessary. It doesn’t need much money because the right mind would no doubt apply improvisation, as what contingents from poor countries in Africa and South America did which led them to exceptional successes that even broke records.[continue reading]

Written by alvindclopez · Filed Under BLOG, Opinion, Politics & Gov't, Sports 

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