Philippine 2021 SEAG campaign draws boost

MANILA, Philippines — Jiujitsu, esports, triathlon and bowling, sports where the Philippines has a chance to rake in gold medals, have recently been added to Hanoi Southeast Asian Games calendar.

“This is good news for us because we dominated three of these four sports when we hosted the games in December 2019,” said Philippine Olympic Committee president Abraham Tolentino.

The addition of the four disciplines should help boost the country’s chance in the biennial games where it will defend the overall title it won as host in the last edition of the biennial meet.

In the last SEAG, jiujitsu produced five gold, three silver and three bronze medals, esports three gold, a silver and a bronze and triathlon three gold and a pair of silver.

Although bowling produced only a silver and a bronze, Filipino bowlers just can’t be counted out.

Tolentino said he would still lobby for more events where the Filipinos have a chance to strike gold like baseball, softball, soft tennis, duathlon, windsurfing, and wakeboarding/water skiing.

To date, there are 40 sports set to be played in the Vietnam Games set Nov. 21 to Dec. 2.

Aquatics, archery, athletics, badminton, basketball, billiards, bodybuilding, bowling, boxing, canoeing, chess, cycling, dancesports, fencing and football are among the events in the SEAG calendar.

The rest are golf, gymnastics, handball, judo, jiujitsu, karate, kickboxing, kurash, muay thai, pencak silat, petanque, rowing, sepak takraw, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, vovinam, weightlifting, wrestling and wushu.