Philippine Olympic Committee president Abraham Tolentino remained optimistic of his earlier prediction at eclipsing the Filipinos’ four-gold medal haul in the last Asian Games with some known athletes like boxer Eumir Marcial not seeing action in next month’s edition in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan.
‘We still have other sources of gold that we can get from,’ said Tolentino. ‘We just lost the potential to win more medals but we remained on target.’
Marcial, of course, had already backpedaled after choosing to fight on Sept. 19 in the United States.
Weljon Mindoro, according to Tolentino, will take Marcial’s spot.
Also a little bit worrisome is Gilas Pilipinas, which could not tap its players from the Japan league and Justin Brownlee.
‘He has two weeks to show up, we’ll never know,’ said Tolentino of Brownlee.
Tolentino said men’s basketball will start early – Sept. 10 – and will end on Sept. 20 while football will unfurl on Sept. 14.
He said the results of Gilas could dictate how the Philippine campaign would end since it is the defending champion.
‘We’ll see if we meet or surpass the record,’ he said.
Also out of of the list is triathlete Kira Ellis, who suffered injuries from a freak vehicular accident while bike training a few days back, as well as 2018 Asiad skateboarding gold winner Margie Didal and Olympian gymnast Aleah Finnegan.