Sports, showbiz & politics are happy bedfellows

MANILA, Philippines - Most people know that politics and showbiz are no strange bedfellows with so many politicians foraying into showbiz and vice-versa. Sports, however, is no strange bedfellow to both politics and showbiz, as many sports people or athletes are active in both. Thus, it has become a happy threesome! It’s a blurry line that separates the three equally exciting fields of endeavor.

There are quite a lot of examples of politicians and showbiz people who straddle both worlds — Ramon Revilla (both Sr. and Jr.), Tito Sotto, Vilma Santos, Herbert Bautista, Aiko Melendez, among others.

What’s fast increasing is the number of politicians and showbiz people getting into the sports world and sporty people getting political and showbiz.

Examples of the second or latter kind are world champion boxer Manny Pacquiao, Olympic swimmer Christine Jacob (as host of Eat, Bulaga!, etc), basketball players Alvin Patrimonio and Benjie Paras, among many other ballers and athletes, who got dribbled into the showbiz and political arenas.

Examples of the former are getting to be dime a dozen already. Politicians and showbiz people are turning into sports aficionados. This is particularly evident in the field of marathons and triathlons.

What do Sen. Pia Cayetano, Karylle, Iza Calzado, former Rep. Gilbert Remulla, Kim Atienza, Venus Raj and Maricel Laxa-Pangilinan have in common? Some are politicians and some are showbiz celebrities. All of them are into sports and they participate in marathons and triathlons.

They are familiar faces in run races and triathlon events. Pia is easily the most active and visible in sports events among the bunch. The feisty senator does not only kick butts on the Senate floor; she swims, bikes and runs. In short, she is a triathlete.

She was last seen as among the 300 or so triathletes who participated in the recently-concluded Tri United at the Matabungkay Beach Resort & Hotel in Lian, Batangas. Pia didn’t just finish   two-kilometer swim, 60-kilometer bike and 15-kilometer run distances, she placed third in her age bracket.

Dyan Castillejo is one sports personality who is difficult to label or put into a single category. She does not belong to any of the two categories I mentioned. So she is in a category by herself. Of course, we all know that she was a champion tennis player before she became a sports anchor or reporter. She used to be the subject of sports news and the one being interviewed. But now, she’s the one interviewing sports personalities. It doesn’t stop there, though. Dyan is still an athlete until now, just not in tennis anymore.

Like Pia, she is also a triathlete. In fact, the two easily-recognized triathletes were present during Unilab Active Health’s Tri United. Dyan covered the tri event for her show, Sports Unlimited. But the triathlete that she is, she wasn’t able to resist, she went on and participate.

Dyan and Pia were spotted not just talking in front of the cameras as interviewer and interviewee. They plunged in almost side by side during the swim part of the event. They obviously had fun, as the rest of the Tri United participants, they even talked about it on Twitter and exchanged Twitpics taken during the event.

Sports people are comfortable with Dyan because she is a sportswoman herself. But even regular runners and triathletes seem to naturally gravitate toward her as well. Many had their photos taken with her and she good-naturedly obliged.

I was told that at the Tri United event, she was cheering loudly for some participants when they passed by her area. Even while she was doing interviews, she’d stop just to holler encouraging cheers to fellow triathletes. She has obviously made a lot of friends during her coverages.