Quo vadis?

With their most recent setback at the 2004 Athens Olympics (wherein they went home without a medal), the administration behind the RP boxing team must rethink their strategy and figure out what went wrong. This is the second straight Olympiad where our boxing team laid a big fat egg in the medal tally (they were also empty-handed at the end of the 2000 Sydney Olympics). And, personally, I find this very disappointing, especially since it was just a short time ago when Filipinos were putting their hopes for that much long awaited Olympic Glory at the hands of the Boxing team. And who could blame them? Especially since this team was the one keeping our country’s pride soaring during international competitions from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.

Here are just some of their most notable accomplishments during this period.

In the 1998 Seoul Olympics, Leopoldo Serrantes reminded the world that Filipinos are still a force to reckon with at this sport when he was able to capture a bronze medal.

In the 1990 Beijing Asian Games, Boxer Roberto Jalnaiz gave the Philippines its lone gold medal when he outclassed all challengers in the bantamweight division.

In the 1991 Manila SEA Games, Filipinos won majority of the Gold medals at stake for boxing. (six, or seven, or eight yata out of a total of 12 golds, sorry, don’t remember, hehehe). This was a major factor in our haul of 91 gold medals (good for second overall, just one gold medal short behind the then-perennial overall champion Indonesia’s 92).

In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Roel Velasco duplicated Serrantes’ feat by capturing a bronze medal.

In the 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games, the boxing team once again saved the country’s campaign as they delivered all of the country’s 3 gold medals. The champion pugs were Mansueto ‘Onyok’ Velasco Jr. (Roel’s younger brother), Reynaldo Galido, and Elias Recaido.

And of course, who could forget Onyok Velasco’s adventures during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. I remember staying up until 3 o’clock in the morning just to be able to watch the finals between Onyok and Bulgaria’s Daniel Petrov Bojilov live. And of course, I was among the millions who were disappointed, as countless of Onyok’s punches were not registering in the scoreboard. When the smoke of the battlefield cleared, four out of the five judges had the Bulgarian ahead on their scorecards, and the Philippines had to settle for the silver medal.

And so with these accomplishments, it was hoped that the team was just approaching peak form and would go all the way for more glory especially in the next Olympics. However, this has not been the case as the team has encountered several setbacks since that fateful silver by Onyok, and has been unproductive for two successive Olympiads already.

I do hope that these setbacks will serve as the proper eye-opener for the concerned people so that changes can be made to ensure the boxing team’s climb back to the top. They should start setting aggressive goals, and work hard to achieve them. For starters, I would like to suggest that they set their sights on the 2005 SEA Games to be held right here in our backyard. I think a good target for the team is for them to be able to regain our spot as the region’s numero uno in boxing by dominating the boxing matches, much like they did back in ’91. Of course this would be difficult as Thailand currently dominates the region in this sport, but I do hope our guys would be up to the challenge.

Quo vadis, RP boxing team?