Sports: The 3 Bs

In the 16^th Asian Games this year, 3 Filipinos won Gold medals. Dennis Orcollo won in the Men’s 9-Ball Pool Singles, Engelberto Rivera won in the Men’s Singles for Bowling, and Rey Saludar won in the Men’s 52kg Category for Boxing. I am very happy that they won.

This good news made me realize something about sports in the Philippines. We keep on winning in the same sports: billiards, bowling and boxing. Think about it. Efren Bata Reyes and Django Bustamante are champion billiards players. Paeng Nepomuceno is a champion bowler. And obviously, Manny Pacquiao is a champion boxer, and many people call him the best in the world.

Why do we win in these three games? What makes these three games special?

I really thought hard about these games and I think it’s because these games are what the Pinoy masses like to play all the time. A lot of ordinary Pinoys play billiards in the beer houses after work or even after school. There are a lot of cheap bowling alleys in many malls. There are a lot of boxing gyms all over the country. Compare these games to fencing or baseball, which needs lots of expensive equipment. Billiards, bowling and boxing are very Pinoy games because they are cheap and easy to access.

Other people may laugh at this. They may say that Filipinos are only good in sports that are cheap. But I don’t see it that way. I think that it is very good that Filipinos try their very best to do something even though they have limited money for it. For me, it is so much better to be an amazing boxer than a normal soccer player.

I hope in the future that the Philippine government gives extra special focus on these 3 games, so we can be able to train young people who are good at these games but cannot afford to go abroad to compete. We have something very special, so we have to focus on that special thing, and not on sports that are too difficult to support financially.