Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Poorly Executed Dives By Filipino Divers At The SEA Games Got Them Zero Points And Viral Fame

As I write this, the Philippines currently occupies the 6th spot in the medal standings of the ongoing 2015 Southeast Asian Games. So far, the country has accumulated 81 medals. Leading the pack are Singapore and Vietnam with 178 and 122 medals, respectively.

The games will end on June 16 so the Philippines has at least four days to rack up medals and improve its spot in the standings. But one thing's for sure, these medals won't be coming from our athletes competing in the diving events. Why, you might ask. Well, because diving doesn't involve landing on your back nor on your feet (this would be jumping into the water, not diving).

John Elmerson Fabriga and John David Pahoyo, two divers in the Philippine delegation recently competed in a springboard diving event and their performances were really not up to SEA Games standards. This was very evident in their fourth dives in said event. Their dives were so bad that they got zero points for their efforts. Fabriga landed on his back drawing groans from the crowd. Pahoyo didn't do better.

At the end of their dives, Fabriga and Pahoyo were shown consoling each other with the latter saying, "Kinakabahan talaga ako. Hindi ko na kaya."

To be fair with the two divers, they had decent performances when they competed in another diving event, the synchronized springboard diving event. Pahoyo uploaded a video of their performance during the synchronized event and they did rather well.

Pahoyo hinted on what could have been the cause of their atrocious performance during the springboard diving event. Pahoyo said in a Facebook post that they had only four days to practice their synchronized dives. Take note that they did well in the synchronized dives. It was at the springboard event where they turned out with embarrassing performances.

When everything's said and done, this is yet another case of under-trained athletes being sent off to international games just so we can say that we have a delegation. Four days to practice their synchronized diving moves? This is simply unacceptable. That would be synonymous to Manny Pacquiao coming up with a gameplan just days before a major fight.

The Philippine government needs to stop sending to international games athletes that haven't been trained with the right facilities and the right amount of time.