Golden dreams

I have always been fascinated by the Filipinos’ intense fondness for sports and the Philippines’ failure to win even a single gold in the Olympics. Teen-agers turn almost every alley into a makeshift basketball court and play all day, fetid street canals become instant venues of miniature boat races, oftentimes with side bets, and town fiestas are never celebrated without a sports festival. It can never be said that Filipinos don’t dream for the Olympic gold. It has a long been a national obsession.

One should see how athletes, usually boxers, are paraded around Manila’s traffic-choked streets on flatbed trucks when they come home from regional sports tournaments with even bronze medals. Filipinos line both sides of the streets and drop confetti from buildings for a heartwarming welcome similar to what America laid when her soldiers came home after winning the second world war.

It is frustrating to think how a country could fail to turn such enthusiasm into a sight of a Filipino athlete bowing on top of a three-tier Olympic platform to receive the elusive gold while the world applauds.

Many say that Filipinos indulge in the wrong sports. The Philippines is basketball crazy but the sports has always been a dominion of the tall, brute players of the West. Many sports where the Filipinos excel are just exhibition sports in the Olympics, like bowling. Some blame government neglect for sports, the lack of equipment, training program and enough sports events, where budding athletes first usually display their potential for Olympic glory. The excuses are endless.

For the first time, though, the Philippines has a real chance to garner a gold in the Olympics slated in Sydney later this year.

Filipinos are pinning their hopes on its team for taekwando, which has been transformed from a demonstration sports to a full medal sports starting this year. The closest feared rival is South Korea but fortunately the Philippines landed in a category that would not pit her against this Asian neighbor. During the elimination rounds held earlier in Manila, at least two Filipinos, a man and a woman, displayed their prowess and promise.

The man at the helm of the Philippine taekwando team, Robert Aventajado, can only hope for the best. He knows the stakes.
The Philippines, though prone to disasters, has particularly been bedeviled by a depressing series of misfortunes this year.
There was the crash of a Philippine commercial jetliner in the country’s worst aviation disaster, a failed hijacking, a surge in grenade attacks, ship sinkings, fightings in southern Mindanao, a deadly garbage slide that killed dozens of paupers, the bombing of the Philippine Embassy in Jakarta and a four-month hostage crisis that has disgraced the country the world over.

Aventajado knows an Olympic gold would lift a lot of spirits in these bad times. He knows fully well. He is the government’s chief negotiator working to secure the release of scores of foreign and Filipino hostages held by Muslim extremist guerrillas in a jungle in the impoverished southern island of Jolo, a known haunt of outlaws. He is also involved in finding a new garbage dump for Manilans after the tragic collapse of a mountain of garbage on rows and rows of shanties in a Manila dump, burying to death more than 200 people already at the lowest rung of Philippine society.

An Olympic gold would also serve as one of his best gifts to a close friend, Philippine President Joseph Estrada, who has been beset with sagging popularity because of accusations of mismanaging the government. A gold would end a long drought for Olympic medals and salvage a year that has increasingly become outstanding for its disasters.

Under the circumstances, I would not miss the spectre of how the Philippines would welcome the athlete who would bring home the gold.