THE Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association will stage the three-day Milo Performance and Team Trials starting today at the Baguio Athletic Bowl in Baguio City as part of the series of tryouts for the national team that will compete in the Vietnam Southeast Asian Games in May.
“Our athletes have not been able to compete outside the country (because of the pandemic) so we are bringing the competitions to them with the Milo Performance and Team Trials. This will serve as basis for our national team to the SEA Games,” Patafa President Philip Ella Juico said yesterday in the Philippine Sportswriters Association online forum.
“We have called this event ‘The Road to Hanoi’ and it will be held tomorrow (Wednesday) and Thursday at the Baguio Athletic Bowl and on Sunday at the Imus Sports Complex,” added Juico, who was joined in the public sports program by Patafa national training director Renato Unso and Milo sports chief Lester Castillo.
Unso said all of the field events will be held at the Baguio Athletic Bowl today and tomorrow, plus the 3,000-meter steeplechase, men’s decathlon, women’s heptathlon, 400-meter hurdles, and 110-meter hurdles.
The events lined up on Sunday are the long jump, triple jump, 100, 200, 400 and 800, and 1,500-meter races and men’s 5,000- meter run.
A former national standout himself, Unso said the qualifying standard for the Vietnam SEA Games will be the bronze medal time or performance in all of these events in the last 2019 SEA Games track and field competitions held at the New Clark City Athletic Stadium in Capas, Tarlac. He said they decided to hold the jumping events in Imus because of the better conditions there.
Juico said athletes based abroad were able to continue their hard training, citing veteran hurdler Eric Cray, shot putter William Morrison III, sprinter Kristina Knott and pole vaulter Natalie Uy, who all won gold medals in the the 2019 Games.
“While it may be a formality that they will qualify for the SEA Games, we are all monitoring their training and performances, especially now that our athletes in the US are set to see action in several competitions there,” Juico said.
