When it comes to Philippine Olympic glory, do we have a past, a present or a future?

The picture seems hazy at the moment, what with our best bets so far bowing out far from glorious fashion in the Beijing Olympics. (At the time of writing, I am still looking out for boxer Harry Tañamor’s fate, and I hope it’s a thumbs up.)

But I remember my mother reading to me from the papers when I was probably four or five about Filipino athletes competing in the Olympics—or was it the Asiad—and bringing home medals that Filipinos could feast on with their hearts.

I remember from my mind’s eye—newspaper photos of great Pinoy athletes who competed on the world stage : the sisters Von Giese, Jocelyn, Sandra, Sonia and Sylvia in swimming (sister-power, ain’t that cool?); Haydee Coloso-Espino, also a swimmer (it was the era of Esther Williams and I totally thought swimming heroines were hot); Chito Feliciano in shooting; our basketball teams bannered by legends like Caloy Loyzaga and Charlie Badion; even strong, hefty and hulking Mona Sulaiman, the track wonder before Lydia de Vega’s era.

I learned later on through research that we had great Filipino athletes who did our country proud—many of them Olympians who scored and made waves in various sports, no matter that they—like Gollum—never got the gold.

In the 1932 Olympics, for instance, three Pinoy athletes brought home bronzes : swimmer Teofilo Yldefonso (200-meter breaststroke), Simeon Toribio (high jump) and Jose “Cely” Villanueva (boxing, bantamweight division) who clinched the country’s first boxing bronze medal in the bantamweight category. Toribio lost only to Great Britain (gold) and the US (silver).Yldefonso took third behind Japan and Germany.

According to www.txtmania.com, Filipino athletes have brought home a total of nine Olympic medals since the country began participating in the quadrennial event in 1924. Yldefonso won the country’s first bronze medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and its second bronze in 1932 in the LA Olympics.

Miguel White, a former Army officer with an American father, won a bronze in the 400-meter hurdles event in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, losing only to Glenn Harding of the US and John Loaring of Great Britain. Anthony Villanueva, son of Jose, won the country’s first silver medal in the featherweight division in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. That was our nearest brush ever with Olympic gold as Anthony could have won it, had it not been for a controversial decision that gave Russian Stanislav Stephaskin the gold instead.

We actually got a gold in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, courtesy of tenpin bowler Arianne Cerdena, but alas, her gold was not included in the official medal tally because bowling was then just a demonstration sport.

Our other medals were bronzes: one from light flyweight boxer Leopoldo Serrantes, who also brought it home from Seoul; two from bantamweight Stephen Fernandez and featherweight Bea Lucero, who got them in Barcelona (but alas, these, too, were not included in the medal tally because taekwondo was likewise also a demonstration sport); and one from light flyweight boxer Roel Velasco, who also won a bronze in 1992 in Barcelona.

Our other silver came from Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco, Roel’s younger brother, who placed second in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Like Anthony Villanueva, Onyok lost a controversial decision to Bulgaria’s Daniel Bojilov in the light-flyweight finals.

We were glorious indeed. When the Far Eastern Games—the forerunner of today’s Asian Games—was inaugurated in 1913, we were the Far Eastern Games champions. In that inaugural event in 1913, the Philippines beat China to clinch the championship.

China? You read it right. China was “no power” and we were “superpowers” in sports. Only the Philippines and China competed in the event in 1913 and 1915; Japan joined up in 1917 and Indonesia in 1934. From 1913 to 1934, the Philippines dominated these games, winning nine of 10 basketball championships. Our lone loss came at the hands of China, however, in 1921.

But in the 1923 Far Eastern Games, Luis “Lou” Salvador—who later became famous in the movies and is the progenitor of the famed Salvador movie clan—made the all-time record for the most points scored by a player in a single game in international competition. He scored 116 points against China to help the Philippines recapture the gold medal snatched by the Chinese in the previous Far Eastern competitions.

In the Olympics, our basketball glory came in 1936 in Berlin. It was the first time that basketball was played as an official sport, and the Philippines won two games in a row against Mexico and Estonia—losing only to the US in the quarterfinals. Our fifth-place finish was the best finish by any Asian country in Olympic basketball. According to Wiki, the Philippines could have won silver or bronze in Berlin if it were not—again—for controversial rulings.

Now, wow. We can’t even get our foot in the door of the Olympic basketball court. And woe—that our best bets so far have not been doing as expected in Beijing.

But no matter. We’re with our athletes, win or lose. We also have silver linings to look forward to when our athletes in archery, wushu, taekwondo and, of course, boxing, take center stage.

The Philippine Olympic Committee—through the Philippine Olympic Festival—is also moving in the right direction with early preparations and long sights set on the London Olympics of 2012. We may not be on top of the world just yet in the present, but we do have a past to rekindle and a future to look forward to, with optimism.

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When it comes to Philippine Olympic glory, do we have a past, a present or a future?

The picture seems hazy at the moment, what with our best bets so far bowing out far from glorious fashion in the Beijing Olympics. (At the time of writing, I am still looking out for boxer Harry Tañamor’s fate, and I hope it’s a thumbs up.)

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