Give her P100 million

  

“Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.”

—Dan Gable

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

WHAT a shame that the Philippine government gave 2020 Tokyo Olympics gold medalist Hidilyn Diaz “only” P10 million.

She deserves more than that; Diaz should get P100 million.

All Pinoy Olympians who did not win a medal should get P2 million each, not just P500,000.

Our sports coffer is awash with oodles of cash. 

The money is only being stolen by crocodiles masquerading as sports officials.

The cash incentives for athletes who gave the country so much glory and pride are peanuts compared to the billions of pesos being ripped away by thieves in the Bureau of Customs and the Department of Public Works and Highways, among other graft-ridden agencies.

We can never tell if we can bring home again another gold in the future Olympic Games; we aren’t sure if we can surpass the 1-2-1 (gold-silver-bronze) 2020 Tokyo Olympics haul in the 2024 Paris Olympics, 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and the Olympic Games thereafter.

If this should be a once-in-a-lifetime cash bonanza, let’s make it a big bang. 

The increase in cash incentives for deserving athletes like weightlifter Diaz, woman boxer Nesty Petecio, and men boxers Carlo Paalam and Eumir Marcial should be done through a legislation.

No politician should grandstand and claim credit for the success of our Olympians.

 

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When he gave Thailand its first-ever gold medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, boxer Somluck Kamsing or Somrak Kamsing was awarded 50 million baht or almost equivalent to 50 million in Philippine money.

And that was six Olympic Games ago.

Thai Olympic gold medalists now reportedly get approximately 200 million baht each, aside from the cash incentives from private donors.

For giving her country its first-ever gold medal since the Philippines joined the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924, Diaz, 30, should get more than P10 million from the government on top of the financial and material windfall from the private sector.

But we have no choice. It’s not the fault of our sports officials; we can’t blame even President Rodrigo Duterte.

The amount that Diaz will get from the government is actually stipulated in the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) Incentives Act RA 10699 also known as the National Athletes and Coaches Benefits and Incentives Act. 

Under RA 10699, Olympic gold, silver, and bronze medalists are entitled to P10 million, P5 million, and P2 million, respectively

Approved by the late former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III on November 13, 2015, the law reportedly expanded the coverage of incentives granted to national athletes and coaches.

It repealed RA 9064 or the National Athletes, Coaches and Trainers Benefits and Incentives Act of 2001. 

Under this old law, gold medalists for the Olympic Games were only entitled to P5 million, while silver and bronze medalists for Olympic Games were entitled to P2.5 million and P1 million, respectively.

 

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We Filipinos are not the only ones being assaulted by mad men in the New York City subway train and other public places.

As I have written in the past, as long as the pandemic is here some racist characters in America will continue to terrorize those who they believed were responsible for bringing the deadly infectious virus called COVID-19 in the United States; and they have been targeting mostly the Asians.

Because we Asians almost look the same in the shape of our eyes, we are all potential targets.

Every now and then we can hear incidents of harassments and assaults—physical and verbal. And the New York City government, as well as the New York Police Department, can’t stop this violence. 

The case of Filipina Potri Ranka Manis, a nurse and cultural artist who sustained bruises in different parts of her body and had to be brought to an emergency room following the incident last Aug. 10, was the latest racially motivated attack in connection with the pandemic.

The only way to “fight” hate crimes is to be vigilant, stay away from characters who are emotionally and mentally unstable while inside the subway train station, travel with one or two companions if possible, don’t sleep inside the train, bus, and their stations, and refrain from traveling at night.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)

 

 

 

 

Why Diaz’s Olympic gold may be more valuable than Pacquiao’s combined world titles

 “You have to beat the king to be the king. No one is going to hand you a gold medal.”

—Donovan Bailey

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

WE can never produce another Manny Pacquiao in 100 years. 

No doubt he is the greatest Pinoy professional boxer and the most accomplished and flamboyant to ever sweeten the dirty world of prizefighting. 

The world boxing belts Pacquiao, 42, had collected in more than 20 years of lording over the brutal sport consisted of championships in eight different weight categories, a rare achievement for any pugilist since the adoption of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules in 1889. 

In terms of popularity, Hidilyn Diaz, 30, who recently produced the Philippines’ first-ever gold medal in the Summer World Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, pales in comparison to the charismatic senator-boxer who aims to establish another record when he tackles Errol Spence Jr. in a 12-round world welterweight match in Las Vegas on August 21.

In terms of achievement in the world of sports, however, Diaz’s Olympic gold medal may be more valuable than the combined eight world boxing crowns Pacquiao had amassed.

The modern World Olympic Games (Summer and Winter) is the biggest and leading sporting event in the world participated by more than 200 countries. It was said that even the aliens from other planets monitored the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Not all athletes can qualify in the Games; they must pass through the proverbial eye of the needle in tough regional qualifying rounds. The system will ensure that only the best can reach and take part during the Day of the Reckoning.

 

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All competitors are as tough as nails; there are no pushovers, all world class athletes with scintillating credentials to parade and brag about. 

In order to reach the medal column, an Olympian must labor hard like Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill in the depths of Hades as a punishment from Zeus.

Diaz went through that arduous and heavy sacrifices before pulling off a shock victory over her highly regarded Chinese rival for the gold medal. Petite but strong Diaz labored hard like digging the Gulag rocks before clobbering other qualifiers from weightlifting superpowers like Kazakhstan, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Russia.

An Olympic gold medal, the first since the Philippines joined the Games in 1924, can’t be matched by any medal or championship trophy outside the Olympic Games. It’s priceless, one of a kind, and the only medal that matters in any known sporting competition in the human history.

A boxing title, on the other hand, can be won by any handpicked (even substitutes who never went through the elimination process can participate in a world boxing championship) Filipino professional ringster in a commercial promotion anytime of the year.

Without defeating all the top 10 contenders in one division, a “world class” Filipino fighter can pole-vault his way automatically to the world championship through the “machination” and influence of matchmakers and promoters.

Which explains why 44 Filipino prizefighters have won world titles since 1923 when Francisco Guilledo a.k.a Pancho Villa bagged the world flyweight jewels by knocking out Jimmy Wilde to become the first world champion from Asia.

 

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The Philippines isn’t stranger to winning world boxing crowns.

From 1935 to 1997, 25 more Filipino boxers became world champions after Guilledo. 

This was before Pacquiao clinched the Philippines’ 27^th world crown by putting away Chatchai Sasakul in a World Boxing Council (WBC) flyweight duel in Thailand in 1998.

Pacquiao, to his credit, worked hard to topple an assorted list of  Mexican terrors, mostly semi-retired, and bankrolled millions of U.S. dollars for his efforts.

In securing the eight world crowns in eight different divisions, Pacquiao also didn’t have to eliminate all the top 10 contenders in each division. 

Through the arrangement made by Top Rank’s Bob Arum, he fought for the world featherweight title against Juan Manuel Marquez in 2004 three years after snatching the IBF super-bantamweight crown from Lehlo Ledwaba in Las Vegas in 2001. And so on and so forth. No  fisticuffs against the top 10 contenders under Marquez’s division. 

Diaz’s gold medal came when the Philippines, which waited endlessly and frustratingly for nearly 100 years, was not anymore expected to improve its past medal haul of three silvers and seven bronzes, having lagged behind other Asian countries in the Games held every four years.

We can win another world boxing crown and add it to Pacquiao’s rich collection of belts if lady luck will smile at him against Spence Jr. on August 21, but winning another Olympic gold for the Filipinos is equivalent to another trip to planets Jupiter and Mars.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)

 

 

 

 

 

We waited for so long

“My children can really understand the Olympic Games, To have a medal is very, very special.”

—Tim Henman

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

I AM proud to belong in this generation of sportswriters.

At least I’m still active and alive when the Philippines finally and officially won its first-ever Olympic Games gold medal in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics courtesy of weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz of Zamboanga City.

My being a sportswriter by heart has brought me sentimentally near the podium of the awarding ceremony where the Philippine anthem was loudly played to our grand delight.

What a feeling.

Other great Filipino sportswriters have passed away without knowing what Golden Girl Hidilyn Diaz did during the once-postponed Summer Olympic Games in the time of pandemic. 

History was made 97 years since the Filipinos became the first athletes from Southeast Asia to compete in the modern games that romped off in Greece in 1896 several months before Dr. Jose Rizal was executed in Bagumbayan.

My late fellow sports scribes had waited impatiently for so long starting when featherweight boxer Anthony Villanueva nearly won the Philippines’ first gold medal in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; when another boxer, light flyweight Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco Jr., followed suit in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics; and when Diaz clinched the silver in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. 

The rest was a spaghetti of bronze medals.

Miracles didn’t happen.

 

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We were all actually ecstatic when the Philippines “won” the first gold medal during the 1988 Seoul Olympics in bowling courtesy of Arianne Cerdeña; but the medal wasn’t counted in the official tally since bowling was then a demonstration event.

It was Cerdeña’s fellow Pinoy Olympian, light flyweight boxer Leopoldo Serrantes, who reaped the honor by bringing home the bronze medal.

Since 1924 when the Philippines first took part in the quadrennial international multi-sport event in Paris, Golden Girl Hidilyn Diaz’s gold medal was elusive. 

We couldn’t snatch it in the track and field, taekwondo, archery, swimming and other events where we had world class athletes but with slim chances of winning it, but continued to dream and pursue that slippery gold medal until weightlifting finally nailed it in Tokyo.

Fourteen Philippine presidents from Manuel L. Quezon in 1935 until the time of the late Benigno “Noynoy”Aquino III in 2010 waited in vain for the Olympic gold medal. 

Still, no gold medal.

Every four years when the Philippines came home from the greatest sports event in the universe, the gold medal seemed like beyond the reach of the brown athletes— it’s like they had to scale the Alpha Centauri constellation in order to just touch and smell that precious metal awarded to the fastest, the mightiest, and the strongest athlete on earth.

 

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Below are some of the facts about the ancient Olympic Games:

-All athletes competed naked;

-Wrestlers and pankration (a sort of mixed martial art which combined boxing and wrestling) competitors fought covered in oil;

-Corporal punishment awaited those guilty of a false start on the track;

-There were only two rules in the pankration – no biting and no gouging;

-Boxers were urged to avoid attacking the on-display male genitals;

-There were no points, no time limits and no weight classifications in the boxing;

-Athletes in the combat sports had to indicate their surrender by raising; their index fingers – at times they died before they could do this;

-Boxers who could not be separated could opt for klimax, a system whereby one fighter was granted a free hit and then vice-versa – a toss of a coin decided who went first.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)