Where will athletes train?

ALLOWING national athletes to return to collective or face-to-face training is one thing, having them train at the Philippine Sports Commission’s (PSC) facilities in Manila and Pasig City is another.

PSC Commissioner Ramon Fernandez said the agency still needs an approval from the Inter-agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases if the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex in Manila and the Philsports Complex in Pasig City would be restored as training and competition facilities.

The IATF, particularly the Department of Health (DOH), have been using both complexes as quarantine and healing facilities for Covid-19 patients since March.

“It depends on the IATF and DOH. They will be ones to give the go signal if we can already use the facilities [for the athletes’ training],” Fernandez told the Businessmirror on Sunday.

The historic Rizal Memorial Coliseum and Ninoy Aquino Stadium in Manila catered to a total of 1,128 patients and according to PSC Security Supervisor Angel Dayag, 1,015 of them recovered and were sent home.

The Philsports Multi-purpose Arena, formerly Ultra, accommodated 510 patients and 493 have gone home.

No deaths were recorded in both facilities. The Philippines’s chef de mission to the Tokyo Olympics, Mariano Araneta, said on Friday that Olympic-bound athletes and those who are still qualifying to qualify need to return to face-to-face training with the qualifiers set in the first half of 2021 and the Games scheduled for July 23 to August 8.

“Our athletes are already cramming in their training,” Araneta said.

The boxing and taekwondo associations, Araneta said, are looking at facilities in Sucat, Parañaque, which their Olympic hopefuls could use as temporary training centers.