Puentevella calls for unity in sports

Bacolod City Representative Monico Puentevella appealed to the country’s top sports leaders to get their act together now.

Somehow a united Philippine sports, according to him, could serve as the first step in bringing the country, reeking with politics, back on its feet.

Puentevella made the call before the weekly PSA Forum at the Manila Pavilion, saying, "the spirit of politics can be lessened if we can get our acts together, maski sa sports na lang.

"If unity can start with sports, mas maganda."

Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Celso Dayrit was beside Puentevella when the congressman from Bacolod, now on his second term, suggested the idea in the public sports program sponsored by Red Bull, Agfa Colors and Pagcor.

"No problem with me," was Dayrit’s curt reply, stressing the POC has always maintained an open line of communication with the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), the government sports agency with which it often clashed on matters mostly pertaining to funds.

Puentevella said there’s no perfect time for both bodies to put their differences behind than now, what with the Olympics and the country’s hosting of the Southeast Asian Games just around the corner.

"The PSC is taking its own direction and the POC is doing its own thing. We will have a problem sa SEA Games kapag ganyan. Magiging national interest na problema ‘yan," said Puentevella, a former PSC commissioner himself and presently the president of the country’s weightlifting association.

He suggested that the First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, an avid supporter of Philippine sports, mediate and talk to both leaders of the POC and PSC.

"The First Gentleman can be the catalyst. He can host a unification dinner at Malacañang and get together Cito (Dayrit) and Eric (Buhain) along with the other sports leaders," Puentevella said.

Just the other day, Mr. Arroyo made an initial pledge of P5 million to the national athletes who would see action in next year’s SEA Games.

This developed as Dayrit said the POC has yet to get an official confirmation whether Fil-American swimmer James Bernard Walsh will be going to the Athens Olympics as part of the Philippine delegation.

The Philippine Amateur Swimming Association (PASA) already submitted the name of Walsh to the swimming committee of the Athens Games after the 17-year old Virginia-based swimmer improved by 23 hundredths of a second the 2:04.56 Group B qualifying standard in the 200 meter butterfly.

Walsh, whose mother is a Filipina, clocked 2:04.13 in the recent North Carolina Ulna Swimming Championships, an Olympic qualifying tournament sanctioned by the International Swimming Association (FINA), held in Charlotte.

"We have yet to get a formal communication from FINA and PASA. And we have to submit all entries by July 15, so we have two weeks to wait," said the POC chief.

With Walsh’s inclusion still hanging in the air, the total number of athletes bound to the Olympics is peg at 13 behind boxers Harry Tanamor, Violito Payla, Romeo Brin and Chris Camat, taekwondo jins’ Marie Antoinette Rivero, Tshomlee Go and Donald Geisler, tracksters Eduardo Buenavista and Lerma Bulauitan, swimmers Miguel Mendoza and Miguel Molina, archer Jasmine Figueroa and shooter Jethro Dionisio.