Team PHI to fly earlier to Tokyo for quarantine requirements before Olympics
TEAM PHILIPPINES will fly earlier to Tokyo, if need be, to avoid possibilities of disqualification and meet quarantine and health check requirements in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chef de Mission to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Nonong Araneta and Philippine Olympic Committee Secretary General Atty. Ed Gastanes announced Tuesday in a press briefing held at the Philippine Sports Commission in Manila.
Gastanes and Araneta provided an update on the qualification tournaments of our athletes despite the spread of the communicable disease.
Olympic-bound athletes might head to the Games at least two weeks earlier than expected.
“Walang official cancellation, walang official postponement, so we’re preparing as if it will go on as planned,” said Araneta, stressing that they are in constant communication with national sports associations on their preparations.
“We had a discussion concerning the Olympic athletes who qualified. The (PSC) Board’s consensus is we might send them two weeks ahead of their planned qualification tournament just to ensure that we are doing our quarantine procedure,” said Marc Velasco, PSC Chief of Staff.
Araneta shared the difficulty of the qualification process considering that tournaments needed for a Tokyo berth are getting canceled left and right due to the virus.
“Ang concern ko actually is that, kahapon kasi , diba sa dyaryo, yung Philippines may travel ban, yung ibang
countries may travel ban coming from the Philippines. Sa ngayon two countries pa lang yan, Kuwait at Qatar, baka pati yung ibang countries pa in which we have a qualifying event,” explained Araneta.
There are currently 64 athletes coming from archery, athletics, swimming, basketball, boxing, cycling, canoekayak, fencing, golf, gymnastics, judo, karate, rowing, skateboarding, table tennis, taekwondo, triathlon, weightlifting, and wrestling, who are working to qualify.
Out of these 64, 18 athletes have a higher than average chances of booking a ticket to the largest quadrennial games this year, according to Araneta.
“Sa swimming may dalawa, athletics may apat, boxing sana apat pa, sa judo we have two or three, sa golf three, so that’s 16, sa skateboarding dalawa, so ‘yan yung mga tsansa,” intimated Araneta.
So far, EJ Obiena for pole vaulting, Carlos Yulo for gymnastics, and Eumir Marcial for boxing have qualified to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.