Pride, prejudice and politics in Philippine sports

We take pride in our basketball team and we broke into delirious jubilation when it won against Senegal, the first ever after decades of losses. We talked about the never-say-die attitude, and celebrated the players’ hearts as being the advantage they had despite the losses they suffered. “Puso” and “gilas,” these are the mantras that we deployed to symbolize that single victory against a country more impoverished than us as a shining moment in our sports history.

 

But when our dragon boat team won several gold medals, there was nary a peep from our collective consciousness. This is the team that in fact actually possessed “gilas,” the one with the “puso” that brought home not only one medal, but several. Yet, its shining moment of victory is in danger of being just a footnote in our sports history. True, its players were feted by our President upon their return. But this was a team denied support by our sports officials, and was not wildly cheered by our citizens when it played, and its games were not covered live on television.  

 

The contrast was just too palpable not to notice.

 

Pride in one sports that won one game but not the crown, prejudice towards another that brought home the medals—this is the tragedy. A celebratory attitude towards basketball because of how our team tried its best despite the odds, a dismissive attitude towards dragon boat racing whose team actually beat the odds to actually win—this is our reality.

 

And there is much pain when we compare the fate of our sports to those of some of our neighbors in ASEAN.   

 

I am here in Thailand on a one-month academic visit at Mahidol University, where I am conducting a comparative research on the role of celebrities in politics in our countries. In both Thailand and the Philippines, the celebrities are found not only in showbiz, but among society figures, which include sports figures.

 

In connection with my research, I had the opportunity to visit the Sports Authority of Thailand (SAT). At the sight of the spanking complex in suburban Bangkok that houses not only its Office but also the training and housing facilities for athletes, I almost wept with envy when I compare these to what we call as a sports complex on Vito Cruz. And when I was toured in their National Stadium, which also houses the National Sports Museum, I felt so ashamed. What I saw was a grand edifice that is dedicated to sports as a source of national pride, housing the artifacts that tell its narratives. Our Rizal Memorial Coliseum, a pre-war, 80-year-old remnant of the glory days of sports, which 60 years ago was where we hosted the ASIAN games in 1954, simply paled in comparison.

 

You see, in Thailand, they really mean it when they consider sports as a source of national pride. They pump resources into it, and have a coherent program on how to construct the image of sports as a national heritage. They administer sports in the same way they administer tourism, considering that both are housed under the same Ministry, the Ministry of Tourism and Sports. 

 

Even many of the Thais I have talked to are puzzled why sports and tourism are lumped together. I had to tell them that such a strange combination may in fact be the reason why Thailand has already won seven Olympic gold medals, six silvers and 11 bronzes compared to our nine, none of which is gold (we have two silvers and seven bronzes). The last time we won a medal was the bronze Onyok Velasco won in boxing in1996 in the Atlanta Games.

 

The way the Thai government, to my mind, runs sports is as a show window through which the Kingdom and its people can represent themselves to the outside world, in the same manner it markets its destinations and its culture. While this may appear problematic to those who are critical of the globalization discourse, and the destructive impacts of tourism, it nevertheless enables sports to become not only a heritage that one should take pride in, but also as an embodiment of the representation of a Thai identity that can compete with others in the mad and inevitable rush toward global and regional integration.

 

The vision of SAT is to make Thailand at least number five in Asian sports. The Thais already believe that they are number one in the ASEAN region.

 

It is for this reason that Thailand invests a lot of resources in sports. In 2012 alone, the Government of Thailand gave SAT the equivalent of P3.9 billion, while the budget we appropriated to our Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) was in no way near that amount.

 

Thailand has 68 stadiums. The National Stadium I visited is huge, capable of seating 65,000 people. What we have is the aging Rizal Memorial Coliseum and the ULTRA that is equally in bad shape and needs a lot of repairs. We have to rely on privately-built and run sports arenas like the Mall of Asia Arena and the Smart Araneta Coliseum, and now the one recently built by the Iglesia ni Cristo.

 

It is also noteworthy to mention that there are at least 10 universities in Thailand that offer masters and doctoral degrees in Sports Management. They call their undergraduate programs not in Physical Education, but in Sports Science. Hence, there is a tacit academic and scholarly endeavor designed to produce professional experts not only in the science of sports, but in how sports should be managed. The academic departments in Sports Management are in fact separate from those in Sports Science, as a way of defining the boundaries between the skill to perform in sports, and the expertise to manage it.

 

Thus, while the Thais are busy managing their sports to become world-class and in a scientific manner, and have matching results to show in the medal count Thailand had in all major competitions, from ASEAN Games, to ASIAN Games, to the Olympics, all we can show is the jubilation and the self-assurance that we have the better athletes when they win, or at least try their best, despite the odds.  

 

For Thais, the steady supporting hands of the state enable their athletes to compete. For us, we have to rely on the mercy of private donors, and we beef up our ranks with naturalized players, to convert the enormous talents we have among us in many events, into actual medal counts wherever they can be found. And here, we even have prejudices in favor of the sports we love to support, like basketball, and against those we have no interest at all, or are not deeply rooted in our colonized minds.  

 

In Thailand, they take pride in Muay Thai as an indigenous form of sports, even to the point of devoting one division in its sports bureaucracy on its management and regulation. In the Philippines, we take pride in a colonial sports event of basketball, and then we leave it to be cultivated, nurtured and for some, exploited, by the private capitalist enterprise.

 

No wonder every victory is so sweet, for one can just imagine the difficulty our athletes have to face, from lack of funds, to dilapidated facilities, and to disenabling politics that plague our national sports bureaucracies and organizations. In Thailand, they have professional sports managers with academic degrees to show. In the Philippines, we have the tragedy of leaving the management and administration of our sports organizations to capitalists and political appointees, and politicians.

 

The experience of the dragon boat team is just one of the many failures we had despite clear triumphs. Denied financial support by our very own PSC, a decision which stemmed from the refusal of the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) to approve its trip, the team nevertheless won five gold medals and two silvers. It also broke two world records when it competed in Tampa, Florida during the 10th International Dragon Boat Federation World Championships last month. 

 

Another story is the case of our Lady Softball Team. Despite inadequate funding, it reached the finals, but lost in a heartbreaking game to the defending champions. The support it received came from private Pinoys in the US and from corporate sponsorships, which only came when the plight of its players was featured in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. One can just imagine what difference it would have made had our government pumped up support to the team.  

 

On the overall, one can just imagine what difference it would make if we have a more systematic, scientific system for recruiting, training and deploying our athletes in all events, devoid of any disenabling effects of the internal politics that plague the PSC, the POC and the different National Sports Associations (NSAs).

 

It is this kind of politics that embarrassed one of our swimmers in the Arafura Games in London in 2007. After winning the gold medal in her event, the organizers took it back from Dale Echavez, who represented the country, allegedly on the basis of a call made by one of the sports associations in the country on the day of the event itself. The reason given? Ms. Echavez was allegedly not affiliated with the national swimming association and hence was not qualified to represent the country.

 

It is also this kind of politics that effectively held our Karatedo team hostage and prevented it from using our sports facilities in Rizal Memorial, by virtue of the fact that the head of its NSA is now declared a persona non grata by the POC due to his personal differences with the latter’s leadership. 

 

This disenabling politics and the lack of adequate government support are simply too costly to the many talents that we have. The victories that our teams have despite the odds are compelling signs that we have what it takes to compete. Hence, the opportunities are there, but we simply inflict on our teams a fate that they simply do not deserve.

 

But what is also inflicting damage to the growth of our sports programs are the fixation on mythologies that come from colonized images, and from how sports became infected by the celebrity virus, to the prejudice of those sports that become home only to the plain-looking athletes from the provinces that are products of regional meets. We convert sports into a spectacle that we enjoy, and not as a heritage that we should invest in. For some, sports is even perceived as a career only for those who do not excel in academics.

 

We do not cheer our dragon boat players in the same manner we cheer Gilas Pilipinas. We do not take pride in the many players in other sports that compete without even the benefit of being covered live on TV.

 

And this prejudice is very much reproduced and deepened even in university athletics by the manner we treat men’s collegiate basketball over its women counterpart, and over other events. It is even remarkable how an event that does not even count in the UAAP point tally such as the cheer dance competition, set to unfold this weekend, would elicit more crowds than, say, the swimming and athletic championships.  

 

It is the showbiz extravaganza mentality that is the root of this.

 

We collectively idolize basketball as a colonial legacy, even as we elevate its players to become demi-gods. Football was not popular in our consciousness, until the Azkals populated it and transformed it into a spectacle sports, and from where they drew the symbolic capital for their product endorsements.  

 

And of course, there is Manny Pacquiao. He may not be the first boxing hero we had, but he surely was the one responsible for using the sports to acquire a celebrity status for him. Manny used boxing to satisfy his natural desire for stardom not only amidst the lights of the boxing arena, but amidst the klieg lights of showbiz. Alas, it also became his passport to gain access to the world of politics.

 

He is not the first sports celebrity who entered politics. We had Senators Webb and Jaworski.

 

In Thailand, Paradorn Srichapan, a world-ranked Thai tennis player tried to enter politics. He lost. 

 

This is perhaps the reason why Thai sports is way much ahead of us. The Thais take their sports seriously that they do not allow their athletes to become politicians. 

 

In the Philippines, sports is very much a world influenced by politics, even if it is also infected by its own brand of internal politics. It is perhaps fitting that the Filipino word for sports is “palakasan.” And it is also a word that we use in referring to a kind of politics that puts privilege on personal connections over excellence, and that prioritizes power politics over talent.


The author is a former dean of De La Salle University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of this website.