At the halfway mark, the Philippines had 15 gold medals, or less than 10 percent of the 197 gold medals already awarded, with 192 gold medals still to be disputed until the final curtain Sunday.
Host Malaysia had 57, Thailand 43 and Indonesia 41. Vietnam, which has sent an athletic delegation of 407, higher than the Philippines’ 352, has 21 at fourth place.
"What seems to be happening is Malaysia and Thailand are running off with most of the golds and snatching them from the Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar and Vietnam, which have won less than we expected," said Philippine Olympic Committee president Celso Dayrit.
"The way things are happening, it is most unlikely that we can achieve our projections. Vietnam has also predicted 40 gold medals, but I hope we can still get ahead of that country," he added.
As of 2 p.m. yesterday, the Philippines had 15-36-35 gold-silver-bronze medals and was ahead of Singapore and Myanmar by five gold medals.
In the last three days, the Philippines hopes to earn gold medals from the men’s basketball team, men’s golf (1), billiards (2) athletics (4) bowling (1), judo (2) and boxing (2) which would give the Philippine contingent 27 gold medals from 29 sports.
The Philippines missed the gold medals in cycling, equestrian, gymnastics, rowing, shooting, and yachting and was, as expected, shut out of the gold medal race in badminton, football, hockey, sepak takraw, table tennis, weightlifting, and squash.
It is still in the running in the men’s and women’s singles in lawn tennis, the archery competitions, rowing, volleyball, lawn balls and pencak silat.
The Philippines can yet pull off a miracle with a 10-gold medal haul in athletics, as promised by athletics chief Go Teng Kok.
The 27 golds so far in swimming have been cornered by Thailand (12) and Malaysia (6), with the Philippines getting only the silver (6) and bronze (3). Thai shooters have nine and the Malaysians six in shooting competitions, which end today. Gymnastics, also a rich source of medals, is being dominated by Malaysia, which has so far won 10 of the 14 medals at stake.
Since its participation in the SEAG in 1977, the Philippines finished sixth twice (in 1977 and 1979). During the last 20 years it finished fifth only twice (in 1989 in Kuala Lumpur and in 1999 in Brunei). It fails to reach the 30-gold mark, this will be worst ever performance of the Philippine since 1989 when the Games included over 35 sports disciplines and gave away over 320 gold every year except in 1999.