Black Friday shutout

Phl struggles all day with no gold to show

KUALA LUMPUR – The Philippines’ golden surge the past few days behind its achievers fizzled out amid the decisive romp of Thailand and Vietnam and the Nationals hurtled back to their roller-coaster ride with no golds snared Friday in the 29th Southeast Asian Games.

The Phl gold medal column remained at 15. Three silver and five bronze medals were all Team Philippines could add to the scoreboard as the pressure of winning took its toll on the country’s superstars.

It had 15-21-36 gold-silver-bronze medals for the day, still four behind the 19-28-42 of fifth running Indonesia.

Thailand remained at fourth with 31-47-50, Singapore at third with 35-34-34, Vietnam a strong second with 40-27-33 and Malaysia up front with 65-45-42.

The silver medals as of late afternoon yesterday came from the women’s lawn bowls triples squad of Hazel Jagonoy, Rosita Bradborn and Vilma Greenlees and the tennis doubles whose main star, Grand Slam veteran and the country’s top doubles specialist Treat Huey, was missing in the equation that could have had a fighting chance against the Thai twin brothers.

Fil-Am swimmer James Deiparine also added a silver late in the night by finishing second in 100m breaststroke in 1:02.11 behind Indonesian Gagarin Nathaniel, who took the gold in 1:01.76.

There is a golden hope in the other tennis event, the women’s singles, where Anna Clarice Patrimonio will play Thai top seed and defending champion Noppawan T.Lertcheewakarn for the crown today.

The pair of Denise Dy and Gonzales lost to  Sanchai Ratiwatana and Lertpitaksinchai in the mixed doubles semis and settled for the bronze.

Athletics, which is close to its 2015 output of 5-7-9 with a running tally of 5-3-8 as of last night, could extract only the bronze from its tired and aching supertars Eric Shaun Cray, Trenten Anthony Beram and  twin sisters Kyla and Kyl Richardson in the men’s and women’s 4x100 meter relay.

Even their bronze medal efforts which shattered the Philippine men’s and women’s relay marks, were no match for the feats of the eventual gold medal winners, who shattered the SEA Games records in both relays.

With Cray ailing from a strained left foot and Beram still reeling from fatigue, the men’s team just couldn’t keep pace with the speedy Thai quartet, which took the gold medal in a new SEA Games record of 38.90 seconds in the men’s 4x100m run at the National Stadium inside the KL Sports City here.

The record erased the three-month-old Philippine mark of 39.95 seconds but it was not enough to even beat Indonesia’s 39.05 seconds for the silver.

“My form was off and my legs were heavy,” said Beram, who had been running for the third consecutive day and barely less than 18 hours after he had annexed the men’s 400-meter title.

Cray also said he tweaked his left foot since racing in the men’s 400-meter hurdles and century dash on the same day last Tuesday.

 “Today was my first day of practice since Tuesday since I couldn’t run on my left foot,” said the Rio Games veteran, who decided to skip the 4x400m relays at the close of athletics Saturday.

Beram said he would still run in the relay.

National coach Jojo Posadas said if Beram and Cray are unavailable, SEA Games decathlon champion Aries Toledo and Isidro del Prado Jr. would take their place.

Minutes earlier, the women’s squad of Zion Rose Nelson, the Richardson twins and Eloisa Luzon lost the gold to Vietnam, anchored by 100 and 200m champion Le Cu Tinh to a record-breaking 43.88 seconds.

Thailand was second in 44.2 seconds and the Philippines third  in 44.81, which also broke the 26-year-old record of 45.29 set by the quartet of Lydia de Vega-Mercado, Edna Punelas, Elena Ganosa and Rhoda Sinoro in the 1981 Manila SEA Games.

The other bronze medalists were Marestella Torres-Sunang in the long jump (6.18m) and Melvin Calano in the men’s javelin (65.94m).

The women’s volleyball team lost to Vietman and moved to the semifinals against Thailand at 10 a.m. today.