Sports: Philippines At The 2012 Summer Olympics: 0-0-0
Our 2012 Summer Olympics campaign ended on a sad note as the 11-man
Philippine delegation to the London Games failed to bag even a solitary bronze
medal in the said quadrennial sporting event.
Men’s light flyweight boxer Mark Anthony Barriga’s second-round exit last week in losing to his Kazakh foe undeniably ended our country’s hopes for a medal while long jump hopeful Marestella Torres failed miserably in her own event in placing 22nd out of 32 hopefuls in the classifications.
The lone female athletics bet wept right after her final jump and had a personal-best of 6.22 meters in the qualifying stage, way below the 6.83 meters output of Great Britain’s Shara Proctor, the top qualifier. However, the United States’ Brittney Reese took home the gold with a leap of 7.12 meters.
On the other hand, Filipino runner Rene Herrera ended up in a miserable 42nd place (out of 43 runners) with a time of 14:44.11, way, way below the top qualifying clocking of Ethiopia’s Dejen Gebremeskel ((13:15.15). The 43rd runner, Eritrea’s Teklemariam Medhin, did not start the 5, 000 meters race at that!
For Fil-Am Daniel Caluag of men’s BMX, the lone Philippine cyclist and the last man standing in London also had a mediocre performance in the seeding run and finished 31st out of 32 riders with Latvia’s Edzus Treimanis failing to finish.
In the quarterfinals, the Latvian rider finished second however in Heat 1 to advance to the semis while Caluag tied Italy’s Manuel de Vecchi for 7th-8th places in Heat 3 and crashed out of the men’s BMX competition at the London Velopark.
Caluag placed fifth after the first run out of eight riders in the quarterfinals and had the opportunity to improve. But the gritty cycling enthusiast failed to muster enough strength in the final four runs to eventually crash out and end the country’s futile attempt for at least a bronze medal.
Overall, the country lost miserably in the eight events entered into by our Filipino athletes in London with archers Mark Javier and Rachelle Ann Cabral, judoka Tomohiko Hoshina, shooting’s Brian Rosario, swimming’s Jessie Lacuna and Jasmine Alkhaldi as well as women’s weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz failing to advancein their respective events.
With the exception of Barriga’s demolition of his Italian opponent in the round-of-32 in the 49-kg division, all the other Philippine athletes took a severe beating from the world’s finest athletes in the 2012 Summer Olympics, no doubt.
As of Friday, the United States pulled away from bitter rival China in the overall medal standings with a haul of 39-25-26 (gold-silver-bronze) with the reigning Olympic champions closely in pursuit of the Americans with 37 gold, 24 silver and 19 bronze medals.
At third is host Great Britain with 25-13-14 followed by Russia (12-21-23), South Korea (12-7-6), Germany (10-16-11), France (8-9-12), Hungary (8-4-3), Italy (7-6-6), and Australia (6-13-10) rounding out the Top 10.
Our kudos still goes to all of them who, despite losing big in London, gave their very best amid the tough playing field and in adhering to the London Games motto ‘Inspire A Generation’. Welcome back home....
(For comments, you may forward them to my mobile number: 09192777888 or you may send your messages to my E-mail/Facebook account: ricosantotome@yahoo.com or follow me in my Twitter account: RicSantotomeJr)
