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BEIJING—Archer Mark Javier earned not a medal but the
experience of his life, and swimmer Christel Simms swam
expectedly not to the finals but to a new Philippine
record Wednesday in the 29th Olympics.
Javier,
the soft-spoken 26-year-old from Dumaguete City, lost to
Chinese Taipei’s Kuo Cheng Wei, 106-102, in the men’s
individual round-of-64 of archery witnessed by a
jampacked crowd at the Olympic Green Archer Field, to
become the fifth of 15 Filipino athletes to bomb out in
the Games.
“It’s an
experience like no other. Even though I lost, I gained a
good experience. Like playing in front of a big crowd,”
Javier said afterwards.
His
Taiwanese foe was no pushover. He owns a remarkable
credential of having won the individual gold medal and
leading his country to the men’s team title in last
year’s World Cup in Sto. Domingo, Dominican Republic.
On
Wednesday, Kuo showed the same poise against the Olympic
rookie, and after falling behind 50-49 after six arrows,
got his rhythm back to shatter the Filipino’s dream of
pulling off an upset.
“He’s a
very good archer. He’s young with a lot of tournament
victories already,” said Javier of Kuo.
Javier
was only the third Filipino archer to compete in the
Olympics. First was Jennifer Chan, Javier’s coach here,
who saw action in Sydney in 2000, and Jasmine Figueroa,
who campaigned in the 2004 Athens edition.
Filipino-American Simms clocked 56.67 in her heat,
shattering her own national record of 57.17. But she
won’t be advancing any further in the women’s 100 meters
of swimming, which could go down into a heated showdown
between heats topnotcher Ting Wen Quah (56.14) of
Singapore and the favorite Natalie Coughlin, one of the
US’s top swimming bets who has a grandmother and a
mother who are Filipinas. Coughlin, winner of the
100-meter breaststroke gold medal the other day, topped
her 100 meters freestyle heat in 53.82 to advance.
After
shooter Eric Ang, weightlifter Hidlyn Diaz and swimmer
JB Walsh—Molina and Simms still have one event each in
the games—fell by the wayside here, Filipino sports
officials are looking to put more weight in terms of
support back home on measurable sports.
“Weightlifting, archery and shooting should be given
emphasis. They are sports that each had representatives
here and that’s worthy enough for them to get more
support back home,” said Monico Puentevella, a
congressman from Bacolod City who heads the national
weightlifting association and is also the chief of
mission of Team Philippines in the Beijing Olympics.
Weightlifting, Puentevella stressed, is underrated back
home and does not receive adequate support from
government. “But I am not complaining,” he said. “We
need to prove something and we proved that here.”
Proof
was Diaz’s performance. At 17 and in her first Olympics,
Diaz, Zamboanga’s pride, set a new Philippine record in
the women’s 58-kgs class. She is bound to return to
China after a while to train for the London 2012 Games.
Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia had secured their spots in the
medal tally board with a gold, a silver and two bronze
medals, respectively. “They are good copies for the
Philippines. They put their priorities where they should
be,” added Puentevella.
The
Chinese juggernaut continued to dominate after five days
of competitions and the hosts are close to pulling away
in the medals race with 17 gold, four silver and five
bronze medals, five golds better than the United States,
which also had eight silvers and 10 bronze medals.
Korea
had 5-6-1 to remain at third place on the tally board
that now had 41 of the 204 participating countries
listed. The Italians, Australians and Germans, whose
countries invest so much in their sports programs, had
four gold medals apiece, but are not expected to
challenge the top two placers for the overall supremacy
in the Games that offers a total 302 gold medals.
Japan is the only other Asian country in the top 10 with
three golds, former powerhouse Russia had two and so did
the Czech Republic. |
