PHNOM PENH—Swimming at the Cambodia 32nd Southeast Asian Games yielded two gold, six silver and eight bronze medals—a haul that saw Filipino athletes finishing second to last in the sport that had six participating nations.
But the standings wasn’t the story, it’s the medal production by the Filipino athletes who doubled the harvest from last year’s Games in Hanoi.
“This is the start that we’ve wanted for Philippine swimming—and it’s a very good accomplishment,” Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) President Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino said on Saturday. “We planned this all along, highlighted by the POC-supervised national tryouts.”
“We selected the swimmers based on their performance and through that, I believe our swimmers were very happy and motivated for being selected for the national team,” he said.
The world governing body for swimming World Aquatics withdrew recognition from the Philippine Swimming Inc. and instructed the POC to form a Stabilization Committee as caretaker of the sport.
World Aquatics also ordered for national tryouts last February that drew hundreds of aspirants from where the aquatics team was culled.
The result was an improvement from the one gold, three silver and three bronze medals from the Hanoi Games.
“The production doubled from last year’s SEA Games,” Tolentino said.
With SEA Games swimming done, the POC tackles another World Aquatics-ordered activity—election of the members of the PSI board on June 15.
“The elections are next so that the national sports association can have its permanent officials and move on for the Asian Games and other international competitions,” Tolentino said. “
At the same time, Kayla Sanchez can now swim and represent us in the Asian Games,” added Tolentino, referring to Sanchez, who’s taking his residency as a Filipino citizen after she represented and won a relay silver and bronze medals for Canada at the Tokyo Olympics.
“Philippine swimming and the swimmers were in good hands under the POC’s leadership,” said Atty. Wharton Chan, POC’s legal chief who’s also a member of the Electoral Committee that will supervise the PSI elections.
POC Secretary-General Atty. Edwin Gastanes chairs the elections body with Chan, Atty. Billy Sumagui and Atty. Marcus Antonius Andaya as members.
Teia Salvino won gold in women’s 100 meters and Xiandi Chua in the 200 meters backstroke, with Jerard Jacinto taking silver in the 50m and bronze in the 100m backstroke.
Chloe Isleta, gold medalist in Hanoi, contributed the other silver in women’s 200m backstroke and Jasmine Alkhaldi in 100m freestyle.
Alkhaldi, Chua, Salvino and Miranda Renner clinched silver in the 4×100 freestyle relay as well as Thanya Cacho, Salvino, Renner and Alkhaldi in the 4×100 medley relay.
The sixth silver came from the 4×100 mixed medley relay while the bronze medals were from
Jarod Lang Hatch (50m and 100m men’s butterfly), Salvino (50m backstroke), Alkhaldi (50m and 100m butterfly), Chua (400m individual medley) and the 4×200 freestyle relay team of Isleta, Salvino, Chua and Alkhaldi.
Singapore again topped the aquatics competitions with a 22-15-10 gold-silver-bronze haul, followed by Vietnam (7-3-7), Thailand (7-11-7) and Indonesia (3-1-3). Malaysia was at the bottom with 1-3-4.