Team Philippines' oldest, youngest athletes

GUANGZHOU – The oldest Filipino participant in the Asian Games is 59-year-old grandmaster Eugene Torre. The youngest is 14-year-old Pauline Lopez of taekwondo.

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Torre surged to prominence at the age of 17 when he won the gold medal in the B Division of the Manila 1969 World Championships won by Anataly Karpov, who was to become world champion.

At 18, he became Philippine Open champion and two years later was board one player of the RP team to the World Chess Olympiad in Germany. He was board one player of the Phl chess team for 20 years before Mark Paragua took his place in 2006 and Wesley So became No. 1 this year.

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Lopez, born of Filipino parents in the US, came to the Asiad as a last-minute replacement for Antonette Rivero who was injured in training.

Like Antonette, Pauline was hooked on the sport, following in the footsteps of her father, Jun, a Los Angeles-based taekwondo coach. She is trained by former national taekwondo champion Dean Vargas.

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Pauline, a ninth grader at Vistamar High in California, made eyes turn with her good looks and her golden performance in the Taekwondo Best of the Best in Manila recently Her gold medal finish in the Korean Open before the Asiad weighed heavily in her choice as replacement for Rivero.

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A brilliant young Chinese athlete is one of the few who have agreed to donate his sperm for childless couples. He passed the strict requirement. Licensed clinics require that a donor be under40 years old and not a homosexual and that his sperm count should at least be one million. He had three times that normally donated by an average male.