Duterte could send cut-man to Rio Games
JOEY Romasanta has a point: 1) Why do our boxers have only one trainer in Rio? 2) Why no cut-man for them? Is the lone trainer that good to make our two boxers victors in the Aug. 5-21 Games in the Brazilian capital?
Or are our pugilists too good that one trainer is enough?
And, yes, reports filtering in from Rio confirm Joey’s fear that our boxers have no cut-man. Just weird. Are our boxers’ faces made of steel?
I am not sure now if a cut-man, should he be named soonest, could still be dispatched to Brazil. The Olympiad is barely five days from blast-off.
Accreditations had been all done away with.
And did Butch Ramirez, the returning chair of the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), get his travel documents to be in Rio in time for the Olympics opening ceremonies?
I guess so. If it’s our President himself doing the representations at the Brazilian embassy on behalf of Ramirez, I don’t see any reason Butch couldn’t get to RDJ (Rio de Janeiro) to be with our “Fighting 12” in the two-week Games.
Same with the “missing” cut-man for our boxers.
Can’t our boxing officials, led by Ricky Vargas, not execute a fastbreak and quickly produce the cut-man for our boxers Rogen Ladon and Charly Suarez?
There’s still time, especially if President Duterte is properly apprised of the situation. You know our President: He acts swiftly anytime at all, especially if the national interest is at stake. Isn’t our Olympic dream of a gold medal a national interest from Day One?
We always say that it is only boxing that can provide us the strongest chances of ending a gold-medal drought in the Olympics, where we first competed in 1924.
In 88 years, the highest Olympic peak we’ve reached are two silver medals—both in boxing, mind you, through Anthony Villanueva in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Onyok Velasco in the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Ladon and Suarez have trained the longest, mostly in the US, under Boy Velasco. But can Velasco truly, genuinely, guide both through the admittedly rough waters in Rio?
And, gosh, without a cut-man by his side, Velasco becomes the most overworked mentor for our boxers, who no longer wear helmets in boxing’s new ruling.
To snatch gold, a boxer needs at least to win five fights—face un-cut or not.
God help us.