By Al S. Mendoza
WE finished 17th out of 40nations in the just-ended Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games in Japan.
What do you think?
Fine by me. We beat 23 countries with our haul of 4-9-16 (gold-silver-bronze) medals for a total of 29.
Not that bad, prompting Chair Pato Gregorio of the Philippine Sports Commission to proudly pronounce: “This is our best medal performance in decades.”
It was actually our largest haul in 60 years, the best being our 42 medals in the 1966 Bangkok Asiad.
Never mind that our Southeast Asian neighbor Thailand had massively outperformed us.
The Thais amassed a huge haul of 18 golds to firmly grip a seventh-place finish, which is just one gold shy of sixth-placed Iran’s 19 golds.
But Thailand was six golds clear of the eighth-running Kazakhstan’s 12 golds—a mere one gold ahead of Hong Kong and Bahrain.
Hong Kong was the Asiad’s surprise package by barging into the Top 10, finishing ninth with 11 golds. Bahrain also had 11 golds but was relegated to 10th as Hong Kong edged ahead with its collection of more silvers.
But the biggest revelation was India, which hopped to fourth overall with 21 golds. Uzbekistan also had 21 golds but settled for fifth with lesser silvers.
China won by a sea-wide margin with its 169 golds, which was 86 more golds than the second-placed collection of 83 by Japan. South Korea was a distant third with 39 golds.
So massive was the disparity in medal harvest that Syria, which finished last among 40 nations, had only one bronze medal to show.
Syria was tied actually at 37th to 40th with Bangladesh, Brunei and Lao—each with one bronze apiece on their identical 0-0-1 (gold-silver-bronze) tally. In solo 36th was Nepal with two bronzes.
If we value an Olympic medal that much—whether gold, silver or bronze—so are such countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, Brunei and Laos which, I am almost sure, would treat their Asiad bronze like shining gold and the winner of such medal insanely hailed a hero upon his return home.
So, in a sense, we could treat Carlos Yulo’s Asiad golds in the floor exercise and vault as commonplace already after he had won both events in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Not much hoopla over it anymore.
But that is not to belittle both feats in Nagoya as, surely, Yulo richly deserved the victories as he had trained hard to achieve both.
Same with EJ Obiena’s pole vault triumph scored in equally spectacular record fashion of 5.91 meters to eclipse his 5.9 in the 2023 Hangzhou, China Asiad. Worthy of praise anytime.
And Jeus Gabriel Derick Yape’s taekwondo virtual victory? Similarly amazing as well as it came when nobody was expecting it.
The troika’s golden harvest of four more than made up for the painful debacle absorbed by the celebrated Alex Eala in women’s tennis. Sadly, Eala’s much-ballyhooed gold finish turned into bronze—a result, I must admit, of a coaching misstep when Eala was unleashed to play singles and doubles in insane succession in a day. In her semifinal match the next day, a dog-tired Eala huffed and puffed against a Chinese skyscraper who played like an attack dog in bamboozling our hapless Alex.
Oh, well, that’s what happens when we go crazily greedy for gold.
THAT’S IT With the ebbing of the Asian Games fever, we go back to reality with the return today (Wednesday) of the Philippine Basketball Association Governors’ Cup. It’s back to business as usual in our dearly beloved basketball republic—not to mention that both the UAAP and NCAA cagefests are also off and running for several days now.
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