PHILIPPINE Sports Commission (PSC) Chairman William “Butch” Ramirez shunned making any prediction on the Tokyo Olympics campaign, but expressed confidence the 19 Filipino qualifiers have a strong potential to win the country’s first gold medal in the Games.
“These are the most prepared athletes, the strongest for me [compared with previous Olympians before] because our athletes before had their own funding,” Ramirez told a virtual news conference on Monday. “Today, we spend billions—because that’s the way we should prepare our athletes. We helped them a lot.”
“But we cannot really make any prediction. But the people, so do I, are expecting big from them because a lot of [people’s] money was spent on the campaign,” Ramirez said.
The PSC, Ramirez said, have already spend P2 billion on 100 Olympic aspirants and qualifiers in 18 sports since five years ago.
The PSC, Ramirez said, spent P404 million in 2016, P592 million in 2017 and P522 million in 2018 for the athletes’ training, exposures, foreign coaches and equipment.
In 2020, the government sports agency spent P428 million and this year, P278 million for the campaign, Ramirez added.
“Our athletes are very fortunate, so it can be frustrating if no one delivers the gold, no one delivers the silver…that’s why I am excited because I might be witness to the country’s first ever Olympic gold medal,” he said.
The Philippines have 19 athletes in Tokyo who are competing in 11 sports. They are Kristina Knott and EJ Obiena in athletics, Kiyomi Watanabe in judo, Cris Nievarez in rowing, Jayson Valdez in shooting, Margielyn Didal in skateboarding, Carlos Yulo in gymnastics and Kurt Barbosa in taekwndo.
Joining them are boxers Carlo Paalam, Eumir Marcial, Irish Magno and Nesthy Petecio, golfers Juvic Pagunsan, Yuka Saso, and Bianca Pagdanganan, swimmers Luke Gebbie and Remedy Rule and weightlifters Hidilyn Diaz and Elreen Ando.