NAY PYI TAW – The Philippine contingent broke camp yesterday, exiting from the 27th Southeast Asian Games with its worst performance ever in 36 years, a seventh place finish which spoke badly of the state of Philippine sports and the extent of collateral damage the inclusion of non-traditional sports has done to the country’s campaign.
Expected to finish at no higher than sixth, the Philippines finished in a position it had never been relegated to since the late Ferdinand Marcos decided, along with fellow military ruler Suharto of isolationist Indonesia, to join the newly formed Southeast Asian Games in 1977 as a show window of their regional power.
With its concluding gold-silver-bronze medal finish of 29-34-38, the Philippines showed that the 210-member contingent, the elite from 26 sports and the smallest on a sports-to-athletes ratio, could not match its neighboring countries pound for pound, sport by sport, except in men’s basketball.
With the inclusion of entirely new indigenous sports and the addition of entirely new events in regular sports, it lost miserably on the battlefield and out of it.
The biggest performer with its 107-92-81 is Thailand, which proved that even if it fared badly in indigenous sports, it could retain overall supremacy with its continuing excellence in the Olympic sports of athletics (17), boxing (7) and the martial arts of taekwondo and judo and in almost every Olympic sport on the calendar of Myanmar.
Host Myanmar, trying to make an impression in the family of Southeast Asia, can be forgiven for including indigenous sports and concededly reigned supreme in all of them – in kempo, chinlone, petanque, vovinam – and boosted its position with other gold medals like 12 of 17 events in traditional boat race and five of 23 in wushu.
Myanmar’s second place finish was the reason the Philippines was pushed from sixth to seven in this year’s edition.
It started pulling away at the start and finished with a fighting 84-62-85.
Vietnam, one of the doormats of the SEA Games but which surged to power after hosting the 2003 SEA Games, has since overtaken the Philippines in all but one edition (2005).
This year in neutral territory, this nation which still borrows money from foreign governments to fuel its economy and run its sports program, has again outclassed the Philippines at third with 73-85-86.
This nation of former warriors, grandsons of former guerilla militants called Vietcongs, excelled in the combat sports of judo, karatedo, taekwondo, vovinam, wrestling and wushu and snared gold medals in the Olympic sports of athletics (10), shooting (7) and swimming (5).
Indonesia, the consistent overall winner from 1977 until Thailand dominated since 1985, has maintained a training program for its Olympic sports and a serious effort to master indigenous sports in the region. It had 43-53-74 for fourth.
It had a lion’s share of the golds in athletics (6), cycling (5), kempo (4), rowing (5), wushu (4), weightlifting (3), chess (5), canoeing (4) and pencak silat and at least one gold in others to make up for zero outputs in 19 of 32 sports it participated in.
Malaysia was fifth with 40-40-59, its gold medal triumphs coming from karatedo (7) and four each from swimming and athletics and modest successes in other sports.
The Philippines already lost gold medal potentials with the exclusion of baseball, bowling, bridge, fin swimming, fencing, softball, sport climbing, tennis, soft tennis and some events in the billiards (2), cycling (1) and wushu (2). All these sports removed 15 gold medals from the country’s 2011 gold medal output of 36.
The Philippines had top performers in athletics (6), taekwondo (4), two coming in the other day, wushu (3) and boxing (3) and two each from karatedo, golf, cycling, billiards and snooker and judo.
The swimming association did not send a team for polo, which has finished a perennial second to Singapore. It had no participation in body building, chinlone, futsal, hockey, petanque, kempo, traditional boat race, volleyball and vovinam and was wiped out in shooting, sepak takraw, football, equestrian and badminton.
The country’s gold medal in 33 sports is only six percent of the 460 at stake and its total medal haul of 100 is also six percent of the total of 1,562 medals from 33 sports or 37 disciplines during the 12-day competition among 11 nations.