An opportunity for local disabled athletes this time

Even as the bigger attention by local sports officials and athletes is the 2019 Southeast Asian (Sea) Games we are hosting late next year as far as preparations are concerned, people should be aware of the fact that there will also be the 10th Asean Para Games which will follow the Seag.

And definitely, this will be a good opportunity for Filipino disabled athletes to show what they are capable of as table tennis player Josephine Medina did when she won a bronze medal in the last Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro. The truth is, when it comes to Olympic level competitions, our local athletes have done better in the Paralympics than the regular Olympic Games in recent staging of the events.

The Asean Para Games has been scheduled on January 2020, same year actually as the Paralympics in Japan, with the games to be held in three hubs located in Metro Manila, Clark and Subic. About a thousand differently abled athletes expected to join coming from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Myanmar, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, Timor Leste, and  host Philippines.

Philippine Paralympics Committee President Mike Barredo is hoping to maximize our participation and send around 200 athletes in our bid to improve our 5th place finish in Malaysia the last time, up from seventh two years earlier, with table tennis, power lifting, swimming, boccia and athletics expected to contribute to our medal haul, but mostly in individual events with less optimism for team events where we may not even be able to form teams in some events.

Aside from the four mentioned events, the other disciplines included in the initial list  are archery, badminton, chess, cycling, football 5 to a side and 7 to a side, goalball, judo, sailing, shooting, tenpin bowling, volleyball-sitting, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair dance sport, wheel chair rugby, and wheel chair tennis.

At the press conference held at the Shangri-La at the Bonifacio Global Center, I asked Mike if paratriathlon has been included and he said he will try his best to have it approved despite  the late request from our side, though according to my friend Tom Carrasco, president of the Triathlon Association of the Philippines ( TRAP ), he is very confident that he can swing it with the other triathlon countries in the region.

I will be happy if paratriathlon will indeed be included as I am currently serving as the chairman of the Philippine Paratriathlon Committee (PPTC) and we already have named three athletes to our national training team — twins Jerom and Joshua Nelmida and Cebuano Alex Silverio who just finished a training camp and race at Yokohama, Japan with the help of the Cebuano triathlon community, which dreams of qualifying as the first Filipino paratriathlete in the Paralympics in 2020.

Mike is right in saying it will be a challenging task for our athletes as it will be difficult for us to beat the top three teams in the region — Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand — but with the full support being provided by the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), with P5 million promised by the agency, Mike adds that we do have a chance, but I say the selection and training of our athletes should be done early and not  when the event is around the corner.

In the past, my friend Ral Rosario, who has been chef de mission in past Para Games, the athletes were given a very short notice on their inclusion in the national team. But with us as the host and no transportation expenses for plane fares to be incurred, we really can maximize our participation in this event with more chances to win.

Boosting the launching of the event was the presence at the media briefing of Andrew Parsons, current president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), the counterpart of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), just as the Philippine Paralympics Committee (PPC) is the counterpart of the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC).

Parsons, who transformed Paralympic sports in his native Brazil and making the latter one of the strongest and biggest Paralympic nation in the world, said the Asian region has much potential in terms of growing Paralympics, and he shares the dream of seeing more Asian athletes qualifying in the Paralympics and promised to extend support  to this part of the world  through grants and helping improve the leadership in Asian countries through training programs.

For those who would like to lend a helping hand to our Filipino athletes for this event, the local organizers have launched a fundraising campaign — Alay Para Atleta — where pledges for as low as P10 can be donated through digital media.

So, what are we waiting for?