Philippine Sports ready for move to… REGAIN LOST GLORY
Sports leaders are working overtime to narrow the gap with our Asian neighbors
It is almost 8 in the evening and Victorico 'Ricky' Vargas, barely two months on his seat as president of the Philippine Olympic Committee, is far from calling it a day as he awaits questions during a scheduled interview. Endless hours of meetings at the POC office early on are behind him and a final one has yet to commence in an
adjoining room.
The door opens a bit and a female office secretary sneaks in her head. "Are they still there?" Vargas asks. He is assured his visitors are and waiting for him.
"Please tell them I'll be joining them soon," Vargas says. He then nods to the person in front of him to continue.
It is given to him straight: Are you what the doctor ordered to get a stalled Philippine sports off and running? Vargas shrugs. “A change in leadership will not solve all the problems,” he says. “The POC is only a piece in the whole puzzle. To be able to build a winner, a champion, we need to include the private sector, the government through the Philippine Sports Commission, even our lawmakers. We need to have a commitment that indeed sports is essential to nationbuilding.”
Vargas believes that unless sports becomes a priority program for the country and its youth, “we will have a hard time” succeeding.
Other articles in this Sunday Bulletin edition, from PSC chairman Butch Ramirez and Presidential Adviser on Sports Dennis Uy’s call for a “new breed of athletes” to Rio Olympic silver medalist Hidilyn Diaz and former world junior boxing champion Eumir Felix Marcial’s rags-to-riches stories, will confirm the presumption.
“We need to bring all that positive emotions and pride to the flag,” Vargas insists. “It’s good if we build the best training centers. But our lawmakers should take a look at how to incorporate sports in our educational system, our culture, our DNA. They can use us, get the pulse of the NSAs, then we can work together and plan programs.”
Two years before his “first term” runs out and a new round of elections takes place, Vargas vows to tackle several concerns plaguing the POC, most notably “leadership squabbles” and “membership” issues.
“We’re undergoing a difficult and painful situation right now,” he says. “And the athletes are affected. I’ve given the membership and arbitration committees six months to resolve all issues.”
Then there’s the cornerstone of his campaign platform.
“Governance,” Vargas says, will also occupy high billing in his list of priorities.
“NSAs have to take accountability for their performances and actions in order for the athletes to trust, not blame leadership,” he says. “We’re talking here of financial, mental and moral integrity. Leading by example, hopefully we can turn around this culture. There may be a need to break traditions to bring about drastic changes so we have to strike a balance somewhere.”
Toward attaining this, a close working relationship with the PSC, Vargas says, is paramount.
“The POC can’t do it alone. It doesn’t have the funding. We need the help, the support of the PSC. It’s critical, so we can’t have a negative relationship,” he says. “Of course while we work together, we also have to respect each other’s mandate.”
Along the call for government backing, Vargas also courses a plea for Congress and the Senate to raise sports to a higher position in the national hierarchy, like giving the PSC chairman a cabinet level status.
“We should perhaps seriously look where sports is in the bureaucracy. I think it’s very low right now,” Vargas says, adding inter-department communications would be easier. “Siempre ang dali na kausap, say, ang tourism o budget kasi ka-level mo eh.”
Can he pull all these off in less than 24 months?
Vargas, who says he draws strength and inspiration for the job from his family, stifles a chuckle.
“I don’t know, but I have the resolve to try,” he says. “For sure, compared to corporate, it’s more complicated and complex here kasi more than just one issue eh; multi-attack ang kailangan sa problems. And the challenges are highly political. But people are working overtime to get Philippine sports going.”
The challenges, Vargas admits, are daunting, but so is the new POC leadership’s willingness to tackle them.
“We’re looking at reforming processes and policies, and that’s bound to make people uncomfortable, disappoint them,” he says. “But through communication and leading by example, we hope to make them understand why we manage and interact with the NSAs this way.”
Vargas has had enough time to prepare for the mission ahead – 20 years.
In 1998, seven years before the Philippines hosted and captured the overall championship in the 23rd Southeast Asian Games, Victorico ‘Ricky’ Vargas, with no inkling what the future holds, was in Bangkok cheering for the Philippine Centennial team under Tim Cone as it battled to reach the men’s basketball semifinals of the 13th Asian Games.
From where he was during the competition, Vargas watched as the Nationals scraped and clawed their way to the Final Four where a Great Wall rose and blocked the path to the championship: China.
The all-PBA Centennial squad soldiered on, took a three-point lead at halftime and went toe-to-toe with the Chinese before giving up the ghost in the fourth quarter, falling off the cliff and landing in the bronze medal game where they narrowly beat Kazakhstan.
Vargas was crushed, expecting to see the Philippine team get a crack at the glittering mint. But he had little time for lament. A call he received on his cellular while shouting himself hoarse during the tournament had piqued his curiosity and momentarily took his mind off the loss.
The call was from a headhunter who told him to get in touch with a Hong Kong-based businessman named Manny V. Pangilinan.
It was a career-changing moment for Vargas, one that not only lifted him up the corporate ladder but ushered him as well toward a life destined to revolve around the sport, put him in the forefront of subsequent national teams as PBA chairman, giving him a ringside seat to formation and training, and carved for him a path where decades ago a departed grandfather blazed a trail.
The next two decades came and went in a blur as far as Vargas’ romance with sports is concerned.
His association with Pangilinan, known in the world of high business as MVP, brought him directly in charge of his superior’s ballclubs in the PBA which he eventually shepherded as board chairman.
When MVP took over as president of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas in 2007, two years after the country hosted the 23rd SEA Games, Vargas stood by Pangilinan’s side as SBP vice chairman, working feverishly to get the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) to restore its recognition of the local basketball federation after it was suspended in 2005 over the issue of rightful leadership.
A year later, Vargas was unanimously chosen to lead a local federation of his own, the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines, later renamed Alliance of Boxing Associations in the Philippines, setting the stage for the smoldering events of 2016, 2017 and early 2018 when the presidency of the Philippine Olympic Committee, the highest governing body in sports, went up for grabs and saw two men throwing their hats into the ring and staking a claim.
The time for change in the POC leadership, several national sports association heads felt, was ripe in 2016.
From 291 medals overall during that victorious 2005 – 113 of the mints in gold – the Philippines had nosedived straight to sixth place just two years after in Thailand with 41 golds, rising no further than fifth place (in Laos in 2009) after that.
When the Filipino athletes limped home with 23 golds in the 29th edition of the SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur last year for the country’s worst finish so far, Vargas started getting calls from his colleagues.
But not after somebody else had stopped taking those same calls.
“It wasn’t me who was supposed to run,” Vargas says from an office inside the POC building at the Philsports complex in Pasig. “We worked very hard for MVP to run because I thought he was the best person to lead the organization. But at the last minute he decided not to.”
The next best person in the minds of “three to five NSAs” took Pangilinan’s place in the arena and spelled out his program.
“I had something to offer,” Vargas says. “And I think they liked my style.”
The Herculean task of toppling a man so well-entrenched for three terms now going four wasn’t lost on Vargas though, and he entertained no illusion that he could pull off the near impossible.
“If I lost, I wouldn’t have mind. In fact, I didn’t think I will win,” he says. “Just to be able to challenge for the position would have been enough.”
And so by a vote of 24-15 on February 23 this year at Wack Wack Golf and Country Club, Victorico Vargas, who 20 years ago was rooting for the Philippine Centennial team in the Bangkok Asian Games, got his hand raised in triumph as he took over the reins of Philippine sports, the same ones held in 1911 by his grandfather, Jorge Bartolome Vargas, founding member of Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation (forerunner of the POC) and pioneer Filipino representative to the IOC.
Asked about his grandfather and the legacy handed down on him, Vargas says, “I think he is smiling and happy for me. I’m sure he is praying for me in heaven.”
It’s now 10 p.m. as the POC president stepped into aq different room where three of his colleagues had been waiting. The door closes and voices, barely audible, started going back and forth.