Home cooking

It’s common knowledge that the host country in a tournament not only enjoy homecourt advatage but it could stack the deck on their favor, defeating the purpose of the games. Brace yourself when Cambodia hosts the 32nd Southeast Asian Games come May this year. The Games are heralded as the biggest, with 608 events in 49 sports. The Sea Games was then known as the Southest Asian Peninsular Games (SEAP) when it was founded in 1958. The objective was to promote better relations among countries of Peninsular Southeast Asia and second, to enhance the performance in the bigger Asian Games and Olympics. However, this is not the case in the past decades. The host country always manuever the Games to their advantage. In Malaysia for instance in 2017, while not all countries were allowed to join boxing weight classes. In Cambodia only two gold medals are allocated to gymnastics. Caloy Yulo could win more golds if there were more events. In karate, visitors are only allowed to join in 10 of the scheduled 15. In E-sport, other countries were limited to seven of 10 slots available and to think the Philippines boasts of two best teams in the world. Philippine Olympic Committee president Abraham Tolentino said, bodybuilding has been dropped too while Muay Thai, where the Philippines is strong, has been merged with Kun Khamer, a Cambodian national martial arts. We are strong in Muay, having won 3 gold medals in Subic (2019) and two last year in Hanoi.

Although Cambodia is not expected to win the over-all title, they could improve in the standings. There are 27 gold medals at stake for their own martial arts that many Asean countries have no knowledge about, guaranteeing sure wins for the hosts. Despite the odds, Tolentino is still hopefull the Philippines could replicate, if not eclipse, their fourth place finish in Hanoi last year winnning 52 gold, 70 silver and 10 bronze medals.

MARY DECK HER

In my last column, I touched on the topic of barefoot runners including Zola Budd, the South African who tripped Mary Decker who fell durimg the 3,000m event of of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Well, the Los Angeles incident was not the only one. In 1974, at a USA-USSR meet in Moscow, Decker was shoved off the track by Sarmite Shtula in the 400m relay. Decker threw her relay baton at Shtula, picked it up, finished the race and again threw her relay baton at Shtula. At the 1983 Milrose Games in New York City, Decker shoved Puerto Rican runner Angelita Lind to the ground when she failed to move aside and let Decker pass.*