PSC enshrines 9 sports heroes

MANILA, Philippines - Nine of the greatest Filipino athletes and a team that took the country to unprecedented heights in the sport closest to Filipinos’ hearts will be enshrined to the Philippine Sports Hall of Fame in a glittering ceremony on May 5 at the Maynilad Hall of the Manila Hotel.

Late boxing greats Gabriel “Flash” Elorde, Francisco “Pancho Villa” Guilledo, Ceferino Garcia and Jose “Cely” Villanueva and Anthony Villanueva, track and field stalwarts Miguel White and Teofilo Yldefonso, swimmer Teofilo Yldefonso, cager Carlos Loyzaga and the Philippine Team that won bronze in the 1954 World Basketball Championships make up the distinguished first batch of the Philippine Sports Hall of Fame.

Elorde reigned as WBC super featherweight champion for seven years until 1967, while Guilledo was the world flyweight champion from 1923 to 1925. Garcia enjoyed a brief yet memorable reign as world middleweight champion from October 1939 to May 1940.

Yldefonso bagged the country’s first Olympic medal when he finished third in the 200m breaststroke in the 1928 Amsterdam Games.

 He won his second bronze in the same event four years later in Los Angeles.

The same Olympics saw the rise of Toribio, who brought home a bronze in the men’s long jump, and the pugilist, Jose “Cely” Villanueva, who captured a bronze in the bantamweight division.

Another Olympian, White took the bronze in the men’s 400-m hurdles in the 1936 Berlin Games.

Villanueva’s son, Anthony, grabbed the country’s first silver medal in men’s featherweight boxing of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

As the spearhead of that 1954 RP men’s basketball team, Loyzaga was named to the mythical five of the World Basketball Championships in Rio de Janeiro.

The Hall of Fame organizing committee is headed by Arturo Macapagal of the Philippine Olympians Association with PSC chair Harry Angping as vice-chair. Also part of the organizing committee is former Pangasinan Rep. Ranjit Shahani of the House Committee on sports, who was one of the original proponents of the bill creating the Hall of Fame, Tagaytay Mayor Abraham Tolentino of cycling, Red Dumuk and Philippine Sportswriters Association president Teddyvic Melendres.

The 10 sports figures were selected by a select group of veteran sportswriters which includes Melendres, Artemio Engracia, Recah Trinidad, Ernesto Gonzales and Manolo Inigo of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Lito Tacujan of the Philippine STAR, Ding Marcelo and the late Willie Caballes of Manila Bulletin, Gus Villanueva and Joe Antonio of the Journal Group, Malaya’s Jimmy Cantor and Noli Cortez, Eddie Alinea of the Manila Times and Percy Della, Pec Manaois and Ninoy Zofranes.