But they blamed the change in lanes and the condition then vowed to come back strong in the five-team competition, the last event in the sport which accounted for one of the only three gold medals the country won in the Busan Asian Games in Korea in 2002.
"We were actually doing fine in Lane 20 but when we moved to Lane 22, we couldn’t adjust and we had problems with the lane condition," said Tyrone Ongpauco, who with Paeng Nepomuceno and Chester King, sparked hopes of a medal haul after finishing No. 2 after the first block of the men’s trios Tuesday.
But they struggled at resumption of play and reeled to 14th place with a 3734 at completion of the event, enabling the other RP squad of CJ Suarez, Markwin Tee and Biboy Rivera to snatch sixth place with a 3819.
"Everything was okay but we faced difficulties when we changed lanes, we just couldn’t adjust easily which is why our scores dropped but it was still okay. We really did our best," said Rivera, the reigning world champion. — Dante Navarro