INCHEON, South Korea – Philippine officials found themselves scrounging for tickets following announcements that those for the semifinal and final matches of the basketball games had been sold out as early as two days before the start of the opening ceremonies today of the 17th Asian Games.
“We have been informed the tickets for the semifinals and finals are already sold out, and it really worries us because we don’t even have any tickets to give officials of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas,”said Philippine secretariat officer Eleanor Navarro.
Smart Gilas will not be seeing action until Sept. 23, after the completion of the qualifying round of the lower eight teams of the 16-team field in the men’s basketball competitions.
The eight lower-ranked teams, which will go through a preliminary phase to determine the top four qualifiers for the second round, are Mongolia, Hong Kong, Kuwait and Maldives in Group A and Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Palestine and India in Group B.
Drawing a bye to the second round are China and Chinese Taipei in Group C, Korea and Japan in Group D, Iran and the Philippines in Group E and Japan and Qatar in Group F.
Smart Gilas and SBP officials are scheduled to plane in by Saturday in time for their opening game in the second round of the preliminaries set Sept. 23-26. Japeth Aguilar, the original designated flag-bearer of the Philippine contingent for today’s opening rites, won’t be around for the ceremonies as he is joining Smart Gilas in training after their World Cup stint barely two weeks earlier.
Korea is going all out to grab the overall lead from perennial winner China in the quadrennial conclave, and while it is bidding to win as many gold medals in each of the 36 events, it is in a must-win situation in team sports like football, basketball and baseball, the high-profile team events, which are also the crowd getters of the Asiad.
Just to show how much Koreans are going to root for their players, the tickets to these games have been selling briskly, with complimentary tickets made available to locals, and only a handful to spare foreign teams and their officials.
This means Filipinos based in Korea may not have the chance to watch and cheer the Smart Gilas players in their semifinal and final games although there are still chances they can get tickets to the Sept. 23 game where Smart Gilas fights the Group B preliminary round winner (probably Kazakhstan), the Sept. 25 game with co-seeded team Iran and three games of the quarterfinals if the Philippines gets through.
Also on the must-win calendar of Korea are archery and taekwondo, where they are undisputedly the world champions, and in bowling, boxing, cycling and golf, giving the Filipino athletes little chances for the gold on foreign turf.