MANILA, Philippines — Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chairman William “Butch” Ramirez said Filipino athletes who will make it to the 2020 Olympic games have nothing to worry about getting financial assistance from the government.
“We will be funding (them) well,” said Ramirez in an online news media.
The PSC will draw solid support from Pagcor and Malacañang to assure that the Filipino Olympic aspirants will deliver their best performance.
Thus far, only gymnast Carlos Yulo and pole vaulter EJ Obiena have each earned Olympics berths, respectively.
The PSC targets bringing at least 20 Filipino athletes to the quadrennial meet slate in July 2020 in Tokyo, Japan.
Lady boxer Nesthy Petecio won the featherweight gold medal in the Aiba Women’s World Championship in Russia last month and it could have earned for her an outright Olympics slot but the International Olympic Committee (IOC), now the overseer of Olympic boxing, decertified the AWWC as a qualifying tournament for Tokyo.
Reports said Petecio’s decertification was mainly of the reason the tournament was organized by Aiba, amateur boxing’s troubled governing body that the IOC stripped of Olympic status recently.
With it, Petecio and the elite boxers of the Association of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines will have to box their way in the Olympic qualifiers for Asia/Oceania in China in February and France in May to earn a berth to the Tokyo Games.
Meanwhile, Rio Olympics silver medalist Hidilyn Diaz of weightlifting and 2018 Asian Games gold medalist Margielyn Didal of skateboarding are likewise on the brink of having an Olympics berth. (Lloyd Tagbago/IAMIGO/CNS)
