FORMER Project: Gintong Alay chief and current Laoag City Mayor Michael Keon reiterated yesterday the need to identify and develop homegrown sports talent instead of looking overseas for athletes with Filipino blood to boost the country’s performance in international play.
“There are other Lydia de Vegas out there, there are other Elma Muroses out there, and Isidro del Prados out there. It’s just that people are not properly looking for those talents,” Keon said in a press conference on the sidelines of the Philippine National Games and Batang Pinoy Nationals.
Keon, who heads the Laoag contingent for both meets, was referring to three outstanding products of the Gintong Alay program that transformed De Vega into an Asian sprint legend, Muros to a multiple long jump gold medalist in the Southeast Asian Games and Del Prado into one of Asia’s top middle-distance runners.
Joining him during the briefing was Australian Gintong Alay head coach Anthony Benson and American Antonio Carlos Cuda, the camp director of the program that ushered in a Philippine sports renaissance in the 1980s, becoming a model for regional neighbors to follow.
Keon noted that he had already given this piece of advice to PSC chief Richard Bachmann, who went up to Laoag during his early days as PSC chief.
“I already told him (Bachmann), we need to scout for local talent by creating regional training centers where you have scouts who are able to look into local competitions to assess and be able to create a strong training pool of potential (national) athletes,” he said.
During his time as the head of the Ilocos Norte Sports Development Council, Keon noted he was able to go around the country and observe the wealth of sports talent “but these have disappeared through the cracks in our sports system, which is sayang.”
He likewise observed the tendency, including in his pet discipline of track and field, to look abroad to bolster the country’s showing in international play.
“I have nothing against our Fil-foreign athletes but they come at the expense of our local talents because they return to their respective countries once the competition is over. To me it is really sayang,” Keon said.
He noted that during his time as the country’s sports czar “we did not have a single athlete from overseas that we recruited and developed.”
He explained that in developing local athletes to excel internationally, “people must understand they come from the lower income bracket of society. So, when you build up local athletes you help them go up the economic ladder. That is most important.”
He pointed to Tokyo Olympic weightlifting champion Hidylin Diaz-Naranjo and two-time world gymnastics champion Carlos Yulo as prime examples of homegrown talent who made good in elite international competitions.
Keon also urged the athletics association, in partnership with the PSC, to put up a track and field training camp in Baguio “which is the best place to have because of the weather and high altitude.”
He likewise urged the PSC and the Philippine Olympic Committee “to work closer together for the benefit of our athletes and the good of local sports.”
