Veteran marksman sees future in young recruits

PALEMBANG, Indonesia – After taking the last shot in his favorite event, Tac Padilla rushed to his hotel to pack up and get the next available flight to Manila.

He was going ahead of the shooting team to attend to family business and be by the bedside of his dad, Olympian Tom Ong, who could not make it this time to the SEAG after suffering a diabetes-related ailment.

“He is okay,” said the soft-spoken, good-natured long-time national champion, who just completed his 17th straight stint in the Southeast Asian Games.

He missed defending his title in the rapid fire pistol, losing by just a marker in the playoff for the sixth and last slot in the finals.

The most veteran competitor of the SEA Games, Padilla, 46, saw his fortunes in the rapid fire pistol, center fire pistol and 25m standard pistol, of which he was at one time the national champion, rise and fall with the coming and going of new contenders in the SEA Games.

He became an instant national treasurer when, at the age of 12, he was the youngest competitor in the World Championships in Mexico.

He was since then undefeated in national trials for the SEA Games, with only Tom Ong as his regular coach. When Ong retired from active competition a few years back, Padilla had to fend for himself, doing practice rounds, sometimes after or before lunch, in between his managerial tasks in the company’s cooking oil business.

Persistent intramurals in the shooting association prompted the father-and-son tandem to put up their own shooting range, buy their own ammunitions and guns, and train themselves in the secrecy of their compound.

These have their advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is they do their training without pressure from the association, but the big disadvantage is Padilla had to train without an outside coach.

That explains why the national shooter cannot easily cope with new developments in shooting, as nobody is around to train him in the use of a modern target range and hi-tech guns which are giving competitors from Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam the cutting edge.

Padilla knows that like old guards of the game, he too must go and the sport must move on.

He went into partnership with the shooting association to develop young shooters who will continue chasing the Olympic dream that has been the passion of his childhood and the ultimate motive of his hard work and discipline.

All, except him and veterans Mae Concepcion and Carolino Gonzales, are products of the three-year training program being continued relentlessly by new president Mikee Romero.

The young bets, led by 16-year-old Jayson Valdez, are somewhere in the middle of the standings in Palembang and are far from being medal contenders.

But Padilla and Romero believe the journey of a thousand miles has started and the goal is not too far away.