WITH three gold medals and a total of 18—five silvers and 10 bronzes—medals won at the Olympics, it’s the most appropriate time for the Philippines to have its own Olympic House.
Philippine Olympic Committee president Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino rekindled his call for the government to take the lead in the establishment of a Philippine Olympic House, a campaign he has championed for the past Olympic cycle.
“It’s about time,” said Tolentino, who was a special guest at the ground-breaking ceremony for Malaysia’s Olympic House that will rise at the Kuala Lumpur Sports City before the weekend. “I would confess that I wish we had the same here in the Philippines.”
Tolentino represented the POC in the ground-breaking ceremony—enthusiastically graced by no less than Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim—as well as the Olympic Council of Asia, where he’s the chairman of the Legal Committee.
The Philippines never had a headquarters it could call home since the POC’s establishment—then called the Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation—in January 1911.
“That’s a long time and we just celebrated the Philippines’ 100th year participation in Paris 2024 where we made a breakthrough of all breakthroughs with Caloy’s [Carlos Yulo] two gold medals in gymnastics,” Tolentino said. “Before that, in 2021 in Tokyo [2020], Hidilyn Diaz made us all cry for pride and joy with our first Olympic gold medal.”
Malaysia has yet to win its first Olympic gold medal and has eight silvers and seven bronzes since its first Olympics in Melbourne 1956.
Without a home, the POC office moved around for more than a century and maintained offices at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex in Manila and currently at the PhilSports Complex in Pasig City.
Areas of interest, according to Tolentino, for the Olympic House are the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex, Clark in Pampanga and New Clark City in Capas and most recently Tagaytay City which boasts of sports facilities, including a world-class and UCI-standard velodrome, not to mention the availability of hotels and its cool weather and scenic view of Taal Lake.
“How lucky,” said Malaysia Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh as she made special mention of Tolentino during her speech that detailed their Olympic headquarters in the ceremony also attended by Olympic Council of Malaysia president Tan Sri Mohamad Norza Zakaria and Badminton World Federation president Khunying Patama Leeswadtrakul.
Malaysia’s Olympic House in Bukit Jalil is the first of its kind in Asia and boasts a 140,973-square-foot facility that will house 58 national sports associations and features modern amenities such as an auditorium, resource center, gymnasium, museum, gallery, café and surau (prayer hall).
It sits on a 2.2-hectare lot and carries a cost of RM103 million or P1.4 billion.
“A Philippine Olympic House is what we need to honor our heroes and more than century-old heritage in sports and to sustain all the successes that we have established,” Tolentino said.
