A Tale Of Two Pools
Being an avid sports fan through the years, careful and constant observation have made me take notice of the contrasting fates of national teams participating in two different sports, athletic disciplines linked by one common word: “pool.”
Growing up as a billiard-crazy kid, I always idolized the Filipino billiard legends, like “The Magician” Efren “Bata” Reyes, Francisco “Django” Bustamante and Jose “Amang” Parica. As I grew up, I added a lot more names to my constant watch list of Filipino billiard players, now including the likes of Marlon “Marvelous” Manalo, Alex “The Lion” Pagulayan, Roberto “Superman” Gomez, Lee Van Corteza, Jeff de Luna and current world number one Dennis Orcollo. If asked to describe the performance of Filipino players in the sport the world popularly calls “pool”, I would utter a single, yet, forceful and meaningful word: “dominating.”
Despite the development of other talents all over the world, especially the growing reputation of players from Chinese Taipei, the Philippines undoubtedly remains as the hub of global billiards and the undisputed goldmine for talents. Some analysts and critics may suggest otherwise, but, judging by the sensational and at times, magical, performances of our players, I believe that my case could easily be backed by concrete evidence. Unlike the other countries, the Philippines does not need to establish pool academies in order to develop talents, since Filipino alchemy and skill in billiards is obviously inherent. The stockpile of Filipino players remains to be the envy of countries all over the globe, since Filipino players who fail to make an impact here at home, could be good enough to be the best in other countries. In any tournament that you watch, all players would admit that any Filipino opponent, even the relative unknowns, would be a serious threat to their chances of winning. I would never forget the time when Roberto Gomez, once an unknown, came out of nowhere to whitewash former world number one Niels Feijen 11-0 in a World Pool Championships semifinal match. If this isn’t domination, an unknown Filipino manhandling the recognized best player in the world, then I do not know how to call it. Filipino players do make it a point to make a mockery out of world rankings.
Unfortunately though, this isn’t the case in the other side of the story that I was talking about. In the literal pool, in other words, swimming, performances of Filipino athletes have been very disappointing. Watching Michael Phelps destroy competition in the 2008 Beijing Olympics only made the stints of our own athletes a lot more awful to see. If I remember it correctly, Miguel Molina, our country’s brightest hope in the sport, was miles away from qualifying for the semifinal round of the swimming competitions in Beijing, talk about being disappointing. As a child, I wondered why we fared so badly in swimming, considering the amount of water surrounding us here in the Philippines. But, growing up, it is quite easy to analyze why we can’t produce a Phelps or a Spitz. For one, we are too small, whether you like it or not, taller swimmers means longer limbs and strokes, meaning that physically, our swimmers are already handicapped. Add to that, our training regimens are nowhere near the world-class training facilities and methods of the advanced countries, giving our brave athletes further disadvantages. Quite basically, the idea of an Olympic-winning quality Filipino swimmer is one of wishful thinking, unless one freak of nature and superhuman type swimmer (probably, a Filipino-American) comes forward and says that he has Filipino blood running in his/her veins.
As a popular saying goes, you can’t have them all, and as the tale of two pools shows, such a claim is rightly so.