Disaster in Jakarta

There’s really no escaping it. If our sports leaders truly believe that their mandate centers on running a credible national sports program, they should realize they are a failure.

No further proof is needed. They practically gift-wrapped the evidence and handed it to the public.

In a rah-rah moment before we sent our national athletes to the 2011 Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia, Philippine Olympic Committee president Jose “Peping” Cojuangco Jr. said the country would win 70 gold medals. Philippine Sports Commission chair Richie Garcia made the same rosy forecast. Yet another official, using his own version of sports math, said we could land in second place in the overall standings.

We ended up sixth among the 10 competing nations, matching our worst finish in the biennial meet. We collected 36 gold medals or just one-half of the medal haul Cojuangco and Garcia predicted.

Let’s call it what it is: a debacle and a monumental flop. Our performance in the SEA Games, not exactly the toughest arena of competition, was so dismal that even a relatively apolitical basketball star called it “absurd.”  National cager Chris Tiu, who is a fierce defender of Philippine sports, told the Inquirer: “If we lose to Thailand, to Indonesia, that would be OK for me. But to lose to Singapore? That’s absurd.”

Cojuangco and Garcia have yet to give their assessment of how we fared in the SEA Games. When they do, they will have to explain why they were way off target and why we should still trust them with steering the country’s sports program all the way to the London Olympics.

They will probably blame the lack of funds (again). True, compared with most other delegations in the SEA Games, we were overmatched financially. But if international sporting meets are decided by the depth of each country’s war chest, why are there countries that manage to excel on small budgets? If the amount of money spells all the difference, why do we bother to take part in such sporting events in the first place?

Simple: money is not everything.

Somewhere along the line, somebody screwed up our sports development program. Go through the 36 gold medalists and you will find some very familiar names, some of whom have represented the country for almost a whole lifetime. In fact, nine of the 36 gold medalists were also winners in their events when we hosted the SEA Games. And that was six years ago, in 2005.

The country still has no strong talent-identification and grass-roots development program, relying on proven veterans even for regional competitions. Our officials put so much emphasis on winning gold medals in the SEA Games instead of using it as a springboard for young athletes to gain experience in international competitions and we end up becoming less and less competitive, especially in the bigger arenas like the Asian Games and the Olympics.

Consider this: Since Cojuangco took charge of the POC in 2004, our SEA Games gold medal count has gone down from 113 when we hosted in 2005, to 41 in Thailand in 2007, 38 in Laos in 2009 and 36 this year. If Cojuangco were CEO of a corporation, the board would have forced him out by now.

If there was one thing that increased during Cojuangco’s reign as POC president, it was politics. Officials spent too much time politicking, bickering, drawing lines and practically forcing others to choose sides. Among the sports that we were supposed to excel in, look at where we floundered: swimming, athletics, karate. Those three sports brought us 12 gold medals in 2009. This year, they were good for only two golds. Was it merely coincidence their sports associations were the most severely wracked by bitter disputes and in-fighting?

However this latest disaster is spun, the fact remains that too much politics always hampers sports development. After the debacle in Jakarta, our sports officials, starting with Cojuangco, must say the buck stops here.

It stops here, Cojuangco should say. And it stops now.

Because in 2013, the SEA Games goes to Myanmar, which finished this year’s edition in seventh place, 20 gold medals less than ours. Factoring the spike in gold medals won by a country that plays host, the possibility is strong that we will go further down in the overall standings.