PATAFA appeals athletics delegation to SEA Games

The Philippine Amateur Track and Field Association is appealing to the Philippine Olympic Committee to take a second look at the number of track and field athletes it approved for the 2011 Southeast Asian Games.

PATAFA recommended 44 athletes to the SEA Games screening committee, which only approved 15, according to national team head coach Joseph Sy.

“The members of the coaching staff as well as our athletes strongly believe that there are more than just 15 national tracksters who earned the slots in the Philippine team for the SEA Games,” Sy said in Friday’s SCOOP Forum.

Sy said that the team is capable of matching the 14 medals it won in the Laos SEA Games.

Sy said the 14 medal winners in the Laos SEA Games that included long jumper Marestella Torres and marathoner Eduardo Buenavista along with up-and-coming athletes were part of the initial list recommended to the POC.

“We also recommended 11 athletes who we feel are bronze medal prospects based on their recent showing and 12 more who excelled in the Philippine National Games,” said Sy.

Sy said that they will write a letter to the POC to ask for the basis used by the SEA Games screening committee to decrease the number of athletes they intend to bring in the Indonesia SEA Games.

Sy also appealed to the POC to forget politics for this SEA Games in the light of the declaration of PATAFA president Go Teng Kok persona non grata by the POC.

“We appeal to those concerned not to allow this conflict to interfere with their judgment in coming up with a really competitive and promising team in athletics in the interest of the country,” Sy said.

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