The first batch of the 141-athlete Team Philippines will fly to Manama on Oct. 17, five days ahead of the opening ceremony of the second Asian Youth Games (AYG), according to Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Abraham ‘Bambol’ Tolentino.
The mission, Tolentino said, is to match or surpass the two gold medals Pauline Lopez (taekwondo) and Mia Legaspi (golf) won in the last edition in Nanjing, China, in 2013.
‘We have strong chances at the gold medals in the combat sports, but we’re not discounting production in other fronts,’ said Tolentino, adding that the AYG is the second largest multi-sport competition in the continent after the Asian Games.
The Filipino athletes are competing in 19 of the 26 sports programmed by host Bahrain for the AYG, which started in 2009 in Singapore but were shelved twice in 2017 and 2021 because of the pandemic.
Jiu-jitsu has the most number of athletes with 17, followed by taekwondo with 16 and wrestling with 13 in the AYG where Bahrain included its domestic sport of camel racing as well as beach wrestling. The Philippines is also competing in volleyball (12), teqball (6), golf (6), triathlon (2), MMA (5), muay (12), athletics (8), boxing (6), cycling (6), weightlifting (6), table tennis (6), badminton (8), beach wrestling (3), aquatics (3), kurash (4) and pencak silat (2).
The hosts have announced that 4,250 athletes are competing and will be joined by 900 team and technical officials.