Suggestions on Guardo’s incentive plan for athletes

CEBU City Councilor Jerry Guardo, a sports enthusiast, is proposing an incentive scheme for Cebuano athletes who win a medal in the Olympics, Southeast Asian and Asian Games. (The ordinance listed it as the ASEAN Games, but as far as I know, there’s no ASEAN Games, but the Asian Games).

For the Olympic medalists, it’s P1,000,000, P500,000 and P300,000 for a gold, silver and bronze medalist and it’s P300,000, P200,000 and P100,000 for the Asian Games. For the SEA Games, the lowest level of international competition a national athlete can join since it is for Southeast Asia only, it’s P150,000, P100,000 and P50,000.

While laudable, I hope there could be some tweaks in the incentive scheme, especially for the Olympic medalists. There is already an automatic incentive scheme from the Philippine Sports Commission of P10 million, P5 million and P2.5 million for the Olympics, I think there’s no need to add more.

What I hope the city could do, judging from the most recent experience of our lone Olympian, is instead of waiting for them to bring home a medal, is to perhaps offer financial support if they do qualify to the Olympics.

Take the case of Mary Joy Tabal, she had to rely on the generosity of private sponsors to prepare for the Olympics. If the incentive scheme will be tweaked to include those who qualify, then perhaps Joy could really use it as she is aiming for a spot in the 2020 Olympics again.

And it’s not that the City would shell out a lot if it includes Olympic qualifiers as we’ve had only two Olympians in the past two decades and they were all in marathon—Roy Vence and Mary Joy Tabal. We also know the fate of Joy pre and post Olympics, and even though she won’t say it, I know any help would go a long way.

For the SEA Games, any additional incentive to an athlete residing in Cebu would be good; the problem would be for those Cebuanos who are no longer residents of the City, having stayed in Manila for the years as part of national team duties just like the guys and girls of the baseball and softball teams.

In the past, Cebu City also regularly hand out incentives to medalists in the Palarong Pambansa and I was surprised why they weren’t included in the ordinance. Doing so would institutionalize such practice. But I guess, there are some concerns in handing monetary awards to student athletes, something that is quite understandable.