BAGUIO CITY – The Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) is now laying out plans as an initial step in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. PSC Chairman William Ramirez said the Philippine Sports Institute (PSI) has already laid plans for the forthcoming Olympic event come year 2020.
As a new norm in Philippine Sports, he said that the PSI intends to have more competent people to better assists our athletes when they compete abroad. Included in their plans for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is to have a training venue in the Japanese capital to better prepare our athletes, sending our athletes earlier to ideally acclimatize themselves with the weather, people, traffic and transportation and the life style of Japanese people during the Olympic games.
He added that the PSC has earmarked an amount for the purchase of new equipments for the strength and conditioning gym that will help the athletes on their training. This will also include diagnostic equipments to help our injured athletes.
On the other hand, PSI National Training Director Marc Velasco said preparing the Filipino athlete does not end here as the PSI plans to bring in experts from abroad to assist in our sports development programs as well as partnering with the University of the Philippines College of Human Kinetics and the US Sports Academy for the development of educational programs in the field of sports.
PSI also envisions a bigger pool of competent athletes that shall come from all over the country. The PSI also eyes to educate not only athletes, coaches and would be sports professionals but also the parents, who are very big factors for the child to stay longer in the sporting environment.
The institute will propagate proper coaching methods to make it safer for children to be involved in sports. This in turn will have a better yield of athletes, better quality, and a bigger pool of athletes. PSI also intends to level up competition in the Philippine National Games (PNG) by improving the quality of competitors with its grassroots program.
The PNG, he said, should not be taken lightly as competitions will be a lot tougher and the national athletes will really be fighting in order to represent their sport. This will create an environment of healthy competition, thus selection of athletes will be better, he continued.
He added that a sport institute is what the Philippines lack to achieve sports excellence and the PSI maybe the medicine that Philippine sports need.
By: BOBBY VINLUAN
