Clock ticking on Philippine Rio hopefuls

MANILA, Philippines – With just 81 days before the Rio Olympics, the Philippines so far only has five athletes who are officially in the list of competitors for this year’s Summer Games.

Boxers Rogen Ladon and Charly Suarez, long jump specialist Marestella Torres, taekwondo jin Kirstie Elaine Alora and table tennis entry Ian Lariba are the only ones booked for Rio.

Philippine Olympic Committee vice president Jose Romasanta, however, remained positive that the number could reach more than a dozen in time for the Games.

“Everything is up in the air in so far as the final delegation or athletes to be named is concerned,” said Romasanta, who was scheduled to leave for Bangkok yesterday.

Joining him in the trip are POC secretary-general Steve Hontiveros and administrative officer Liza Ner.

Romasanta said it’s a “two-in-one” meeting – a gathering of representatives from Asian countries that are fielding entries to the Olympics on Aug. 5 to 21.

“It’s an Olympic Solidarity meeting and a pre-DRM (delegates registration meeting) for among Asian countries going to Rio,” he said.

“Hopefully we should be able to thresh out a lot of queries in this meeting,” said Romasanta.

Under the Olympic Solidarity program, certain athletes from certain countries can be awarded berths to Rio on the universality rule which is more known as the wild card.

There are a few Filipino athletes who can make it to Rio under the universality program.

There are others, too, who have met the Olympic standards but are yet awaiting confirmation from their respective IFs (international federations), like Eric Cray of athletics and Hidilyn Diaz of weightlifting.

“We have athletes just waiting for confirmation. There are IFs that are just waiting for all their qualifying events to finish before they make the announcement,” said Romasanta.

Filipino athletes in boxing, golf or even basketball are still in the hunt for Rio berths.

“The last qualifying event for boxing ends on June 30, the cut-off for golf is on July 11, and the basketball (world) qualifiers will begin on July 5. Other sports also have qualifiers until June 30,” said the POC official.

The final deadline for entries by name is on July 18, to be followed closely by another DRM (meeting) on July 22 in Rio.

“We are short of time. But I’m still hoping that we can attain the number and I’m very optimistic that we will. We just can’t say right now how many athletes we are sending to Rio,” said Romasanta.

“We don’t want to create false expectations,” he said.

In the 2012 London Olympics, the Philippines sent 11 athletes in archery, athletics, boxing, cycling, judo, shooting, swimming, weightlifting, with Diaz as the flag-bearer in the opening rites.