BY NICK GIONGCO
Only 18 to 20 Filipino athletes have genuine chances of making the grade for the Tokyo Olympics, chief of mission Nonong Araneta said during a media briefing Tuesday at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex.
Araneta said 19 national sports association leaders had submitted a list of 64 names but less than a third “are within striking distance” of the Olympic mark.
Bets from athletics, boxing, cycling, judo and weightlifting are among those knocking on Tokyo’s door, according to Araneta.
2016 Rio Olympics silver medalist Hidilyn Diaz is almost a shoo-in as she only has to participate in one more ranking event before being formally getting her berth.
So far, three athletes have formally secured their slots to the July 24-Aug. 9 Olympics: pole vaulter Ej Obiena, world champion gymnast Carlos Yulo and boxer Eumir Felix Marcial.
Araneta said boxing can punch more qualifiers given its storied track record.
Paris will stage the World Qualifying in May and this will be the last chance for the six who failed to make a dent in Jordan to book Olympic slots.
Only Marcial, the 2019 world championships silver medalist, succeeded in hurdling the obstacle in the Jordanian capital of Amman as women’s top seed Nesthy Petecio and five others dropped like flies.
Araneta said that 3×3 basketball is in the running but it will have to come up with a super extraordinary performance during the India qualifiers to make the top three out of 20 entries.
“We are bracketed with Slovenia, France…mukhang malabo yan,” said Araneta, who heads the Philippine Football Federation.
The Philippines is bidding to send a relatively bigger athletes’ list to Tokyo after fielding just 13 in the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Meanwhile, Team Philippines plans to fly earlier to Tokyo to avoid possibilities of disqualification and meet quarantine and health check requirements in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“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.
