Where will golds come from?

Claiming a gold medal at the Asian Games has been a daunting challenge for the Philippines over the last 12 stagings of the quadrennial event since 1966. The average haul has been 2.3 gold medals from Bangkok in 1966 to Guangzhou in 2010. In 1974, the Philippines plunged to its lowest ebb with not a single gold medal at the Tehran Games. That was the only event in 16 editions where the Philippines was blanked.

At the last Asian Games in Guangzhou, the Philippines brought home three gold medals, courtesy of flyweight boxer Rey Saludar, 9-ball men’s singles champion Dennis Orcollo and bowling men’s singles winner Biboy Rivera. The harvest included four silvers from female boxer Annie Albania, 9-ball men’s singles runner-up Warren Kiamco, golf’s Miguel Tabuena and the chess team led by Wesley So and Eugene Torre. Alas, this year, the Asian Games calendar has delisted cue sports and chess, removing two potential gold mines where the Philippines could’ve struck paydirt.

Back in the day, the Philippines didn’t do too badly in the Asian Games, capturing five golds in 1951, 14 (an all-time high) in 1954 when Manila hosted (for the first and only time), nine in 1958 and seven in 1962. The downturn began with only two in 1966, then one in 1970 and none in 1974.

Overall, the Philippines has collected 364 total medals as only one of seven countries to participate in 16 straight Asian Games. That breaks down into 61 gold, 109 silver and 194 bronze medals. On top of the all-time gold medal count is China with 1191 then Japan with 910 but in terms of total medals, Japan is No. 1 with 2650 and China next with 2553 followed by South Korea with 1,829. No other country has gathered at least 600. The Philippines ranks No. 10 in the medal standings behind China, Japan, South Korea, Iran, India, Kazakhstan, Thailand, North Korea and Chinese-Taipei.

* * * *

This year’s Asian Games has assembled 9,501 athletes from 45 countries to vie for 439 gold medals in 36 sports. The numbers are slightly lower than in Guangzhou four years ago when 9,704 athletes competed for 476 gold medals in 42 sports.

Incheon’s calendar lists 28 Olympic and eight non-Olympic sports. Struck out from the Guangzhou menu were roller sports, chess, cue sports, dancesport, softball (reclassified under baseball) and dragon boat. The eight non-Olympic sports that made it are baseball, 10-pin bowling, cricket, kabaddi, karate, sepak takraw, squash and wushu.

The Philippines’ 157 athletes are battling in 25 sports excluding badminton, cricket, football, handball, field hockey, kabaddi, modern pentathlon, sepak takraw, squash, table tennis and volleyball. Surprisingly, host South Korea isn’t the country with the largest delegation. It’s China with 894 athletes. South Korea has 833 and Japan, 718. Chinese-Taipei is represented by 420 athletes and Hong Kong, 476. Four Southeast Asian countries brought in more athletes than the Philippines, namely, Thailand with 518, Malaysia 277, Singapore 230 and Indonesia 186. There are 22 countries with less athletes than the Philippines.

Of the 45 countries fighting for honors in Incheon, only three have never won a medal at the Asian Games – Bhutan, Maldives and Timor Leste.

* * * *

PSC chairman and chef de mission Richie Garcia said the target is for the Philippines to bag seven gold medals in Incheon, slightly less than the 8.7 average haul in the first four Asian Games and considerably higher than the 2.3 norm in the last 12. But where will the gold medals come from? Hopes are high that boxing, bowling, cycling, golf, taekwondo, windsurfing, wushu and basketball will contribute to the gold strike. Cue sports would’ve been a high-probability source but the Incheon organizers mercilessly scratched it out of the calendar.

The sports with the most gold medals at stake are athletics with 47, shooting with 44 and swimming with 38. Then, there are wrestling with 20, judo and taekwondo with 16 each, weightlifting and wushu with 15 apiece, rowing, gymnastics (artistic) and sailing with 14 each and karate and boxing with 13 apiece.

The New York Times recently said in terms of content, the Asian Games are bigger than the Summer Olympics. In London, there were 302 events in 26 sports compared to Incheon’s 439 in 36. Writer Christopher Clarey described the Asian Games as “esoteric” and cited two sports that are virtually unheard of in the Western world – kabaddi and sepak takraw. India is dominant in kabaddi because it isn’t played anywhere else. Over 435 million Indian TV viewers watched the pro kabaddi league this year and that statistic appears to be the justification for keeping the sport in the Asian Games calendar. As for sepak takraw, the net event is a combination of football and volleyball, a staple in the Southeast Asian Games because of influential Thailand which dominates the sport and Malaysia which invented it. The Philippines, enjoying hardly any lobbying leverage in Asia, won’t be playing either in Incheon.