BalotSports.info

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Olympic Committee will be staging multi-sports tournaments to discover, tap and train talents for various international events like the Asian Youth Games and the World Youth Olympics.

“The POC has already begun supporting camps, tournaments, tours and participation in qualifying tournaments for the Youth Olympic Games in shooting, archery, taekwondo, tennis, boxing, basketball and swimming,” said swim chief and POC deputy spokesperson Mark Joseph.

Joseph said that as early as last year International Olympic Committee representative to RP Frank Elizalde had met with national sports associations to remind them of the importance the IOC places on the Youth Olympic Games.

“He (Elizalde) said we have to develop Filipino qualifiers and hopefully winners in these games,” said Joseph.

The POC is reviving the Batang Pinoy, a multi-sport event open only to in and out-of-school athletes aged 12 years old and below.


The program was shelved because of budgetary constraints. Plans are afoot to stage the Philippine Youth Olympic Sports festival to complement the Batang Pinoy.

“Over the next few years, we look forward to even more foreign experts to assist us and see the return of the new improved Batang Pinoy and the Philippine Youth Olympic sportsfest involving the Department of Education and local government units after the election,” said Joseph.

Joseph, meanwhile, announced they’ll be sending promising young tankers to train in the New South Wales Institute of Sports in Sydney, Australia, the same school former Olympic golden boy Ian “The Torpedo” Thorpe trained.

The swimmers are Jessie Lacuna, Jasmine Al-Khaldi, Banjo Borja, Dorothy Grace Hong and Jose Gonzales – all products of the Palarong Pambansa and the Philippine Olympic Festival.

“At the last SEA Games, the Australian coaches of Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore were all wondering how we could get our kids into the same training center where Ian Thorpe was trained and to be handled by coach Jim Fowlie,” said RP team coach Pinky Brosas.

“There are many interesting developments in international swimming these days and we are looking at developing stronger relations with Australia for our swimmers.

“It’s closer to the Philippines and has offered PASA the assistance of its top experts to upgrade not just our local coaching standards but also the structure of PASA’s development program,” said Joseph.

Source: Joey Villar  | Philstar.com