The impossible dream
The 30th Southeast Asian Games, or the 2019 SEA Games, a biennial regional multi-sport event will open in a week, from November 30 to December 11 which we all had known by now that the Philippines will be hosting. I don’t know much about the preparations of our athletes for the coming SEA Games and how ready are they to battle regional powerhouses Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and even Vietnam. I just do hope that they will make good and better their performance two years ago.
As per reports, the “world class” Athletic Stadium and Aquatic Center at Clark, the Philippine Arena at Bulacan, venues at Subic, Batangas and the refurbished Rizal Memorial Sports Complex are ready for the Games.
I won’t be going into the ongoing controversy about the costs of this year’s hosting and of the kaldero or the takure or the athlete’s official jackets or whatever and the subtly implied kickbacks made. We leave the grandstanding to the people in coats and barong populating the nation’s legislative halls, these horror-rables.
Basing on previous news reports, a good number of our athletes had undergone training abroad and likewise participated in foreign competitions in preparation for this year’s edition of the SEAG. But some deserving athletes were deprived of inclusion to the national team because heads of their respective sporting associations have different agendas, which is old news.
In fairness to our SEAG athletes, they were cautious in their medal predictions and podium finishes, safely saying that they’ll be trying their best to win for the country medals in the 56 sports to be contested, the highest number of sports programmed in the history of the games.
The last time we hosted the event was in 2005 and we bagged 113 golds on the way to the overall championships. We had regressed since then, hovering between fourth to sixth places with our worst medal tally of 23 golds at the 2017 Malaysia SEAG.
In 10 years, between 2007 to 2017, the total number of SEAG golds we had was 196. Then here comes the incredible part.
NSA heads have a wildly creative imagination that they had projected a 220 gold medal harvest and the overall title to boot. They declared this fantasy in a gathering last week called by the Philippine Olympic Committee and the Philippine Sports Commission.
If Manila traffic is worth 100 gold medals, then our athletes still have plenty of medals to collect to get to 220. Host countries usually make good in these events but this forecast is something for Ripley’s Believe It or Not, basing on our previous performance in the past SEAGs.
Maybe these heads of NSAs had employed the mystics around Mount Makiling and Siquijor Province and were supplied with superhuman potions. Maybe they had an agreement with that pastor who owns the universe and were given the power to “istap” other competing nations from their gold medal winning ways.
Let’s give the prophecy to the pastor and be realistic. Finishing third in this edition is already a big achievement for our athletes and with maybe 80 gold medals or so. But if we do reach the 200 gold medal mark, then I can safely say that fantasy can become reality.
To dream the impossible dream. To reach the unreachable stars. This is the NSAs quest, no matter how far out.
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