NSAs to nominate RP Asiad hopefuls

MANILA, Philippines - The different national sports associations (NSAs) have been given the free hand to nominate their respective athletes for inclusion to the Philippine delegation to the Guangzhou Asian Games in November.

But it won’t be as easy as that because the NSA officials will have to justify their choices.

“They will submit their pool of athletes and then justify it,” said Moying Martelino, a member of the seven-man committee formed by the Philippine Olympic Committee to look into the formation of the RP Team.

Martelino, an old, reliable hand in RP sports, said the committee has decided to do away with a standard criteria for all NSAs to follow because it doesn’t really apply to the every sport – subjective or measurable.

Philippine Sports Commission chairman Harry Angping is looking at his own criteria for the athletes to be funded by the government sports agency, adding that he expects only a hundred athletes to make it to RP Team.

Angping wants only the athletes with realistic chances of landing a medal of any color, and as criteria he said anyone who comes close to the bronze medal standard of the 2006 Doha Asian Games can join the team.

In Doha, the Philippines fielded 233 athletes that came home with four gold, six silver and nine bronze medals, and the PSC chief is confident that the country can surpass the haul with a leaner but meaner team.

The POC committee, however, has gone the other way in saying that it’s the NSA presidents, and not a specific criteria, that should decide the composition of the team that will vie in the quadrennial competition.

“No one knows better if an athlete is qualified to compete in the Asian Games than the NSA presidents,” said Martelino who was joined by another member of the committee, Mario Tanchangco, in yesterday’s Scoop forum.

The POC committee is headed by Jose Romasanta, who was also designated as the RP team’s chef-de-mission to Guangzhou.

Again, Martelino said doing away with a specific criteria means that anybody can go.

“The Asian Games is very close to the Olympics when it comes to the level of competition because its participants are world class. This is not for exposure,” said Martelino, former secretary-general of the Asian Basketball Confederation.

Martelino said it’s not that hard to determine whether an athlete deserves to go to Guangzhou, whether he or she competes in subjective (like boxing or taekwondo) or measurable (like athletics and swimming) sports.

“In measurable sports, all you need to do is compare the times, and in sujective sports their previous and present performances. It’s easy to check through the Internet,” said Martelino, who gave the NSAs until Feb. 15 to come up with their nominations.

He said all Pinoy gold medalists in the 2009 Laos SEA Games (38 golds) should be considered for Guangzhou as well as all the medalists in Doha as long as they’re still in very good condition.