NAY PYI TAW, Myanmar – The Philippine wushu team delivered as promised and as expected, winning two gold and two silver medals yesterday to get the country’s campaign going after a rather shaky start in the 27th Southeast Asian Games here in Myanmar.
Jessie Aligaga and Denbert Arcita, gold medalists in the 2012 Sanda World Cup in China, struck in their favorite event of sanda, a combat event in wushu. They topped the 48 kg and 52 kg divisions, respectively.
The twin victories pushed the Philippines in the middle of the medal standings with two golds, four silvers and one bronze.
Of the three silver medals for Team Philippines, two came from wushu’s Evita Zamora (women’s 52 kg sanda) and Divine Wally (women’s 48 kg sanda) and the other from wrestling’s Margarito Angana (55 kg Greco Roman).
Francisco Solis accounted for the country’s lone bronze in the 56 kg sanda.
The Philippines, overall champion in 2005 but sixth in 2011, is currently running sixth among 11 countries as action picked up heading to tomorrow’s formal opening ceremony.
As of 7 p.m. yesterday, host Myanmar is enjoying a big headstart with a medal (gold-silver-bronze) haul of 11-2-5, followed by Indonesia with 4-3-5, Vietnam with 4-3-4, Malaysia with 3-5-11 and Thailand with 2-6-1.
Laos is seventh with 1-2-5, followed by Cambodia at 0-2-5, Singapore 0-1-2, then Brunei and Timor-Leste with no medal to show.
Singapore, which will host the 2015 SEA Games, is expected to pick up the pace in the coming days, and is projected to land in the top five.
Filipino sports officials are not too optimistic in this year’s edition after the calendar of events went against their favor. At worst, they are looking at a seventh-place finish for the 2005 overall champions.
Aligaga defeated Indonesia’s Dasmantua Simbolon for the gold while Arcita got past Thailand’s Thithak Paokrathok in the finals.
The Philippines also scored twice in basketball yesterday with its men’s and women’s team scraping past their respective rivals.
The men’s team known as Sinag Pilipinas survived some scare from Singapore before nailing an 88-75 victory while the women’s team known as Perlas Pilipinas downed Malaysia, 65-59.
The Philippines is tipped to win the men’s gold in basketball and is rated high in the women’s side.
“We won our first game but played very poorly by our standards. We’ve got to unlearn the PBA D-league type of D (defense) because it gets called as a foul every time,†said Josh Reyes, assistant coach of the men’s team.
“We gave up too many free throws and offensive rebounds,†he added. – With reports from Gerry Carpio