MANILA, 7 December — Asia’s former sprint queen Lydia de Vega-Mercado is batting for a comprehensive follow-up program to ensure the continued development of young national athletes expected to be discovered in the ongoing Third Batang Pinoy-Philippine National Youth Games in Bacolod City, South of the Philippines.
“This project (National Youth Games) should be the start of the country’s honest-to-goodness search for future national athletes — and there should be continuity,” said De Vega-Mercado, one of the greatest Filipino athletes of all time. “After this, what now? For so long, we have not tapped the countryside in search of good athletes. The PSC (Philippine Sports Commission) needs to have a continuity in its program if we are to discover potential world-caliber athletes.” What is needed, the sports icon said, is a more comprehensive program similar to the Project: Gintong Alay, where the young athletes with talents are picked out, nurtured and fully taken care of by the government. “Although this three-year-old meet is not exactly a waste of time and money, it comes close,” she added, an oblique reference to recent controversies faced by organizers of this sportsfest, a meet for 12-and-below athletes.
“To achieve the main objective of this event — which is to discover young talents and then harness them to the fullest — the government must ensure the continued development of the outstanding products of the Batang Pinoy.” De Vega-Mercado said that the Batang Pinoy-Philippine National Youth Games should not be the last stop of young athletes discovered in the PSC’s grassroots development program being held at the Panaad Park and Sports Stadium.
She pointed out the importance of having continuity in the grassroots development program of the government.
“There are a lot of potential national athletes in the countryside and they are just waiting to be discovered,” she said.
The 38-year-old Meycauayan native, who serves as a consultant for athletics at the PSC, noted that unlike during the golden days of the Project Gintong Alay, where she was one of its proud products, together with fellow tracksters Isidro de Prado and Elma Muros, athletes discovered were put in a training pool to prepare them for tougher competition.
But in the case of the Batang Pinoy-Philippine National Youth Games, no follow-up programs are put up by PSC — the government’s policy-making agency in sports — to ensure that these new talents can go farther and make a name for themselves and the country in the international scene.
“I was only 12 when I was first trained as an athlete. By the time I was 14, I was ready to compete in major competitions abroad,” said the woman who was just 16 when she won her first of 14 Southeast Asian Games gold medals before becoming reigning supreme in the 1982 and 1986 editions of the prestigious Asian Games.
Finding talents
Earlier this year, the PSC has tapped the services of De Veg-Mercado to bolster the government sports agency’s grassroots program in athletics.
“With her outstanding record and vast experience in track and field, we feel that Lydia will be a big help in promoting the PSC’s thrust in athletics at the grassroots level,” said PSC chairman Carlos Tuason when he hired De Vega-Mercado for the job. De Vega-Mercado’s appointment started in March working as a consultant under the office of Commissioner William Ramirez who is in charge of the PSC’s grassroots and mass-based projects like the Batang Pinoy-Philippine National Youth Games.
Among De Vega-Mercado’s tasks is to go out into the countryside to screen and evaluate the abilities of athletics instructors since a lot of them need to brush up on the latest trends.
“We want Lydia to help us scout for budding athletics potentials so that we can begin training them at a tender age to expand our talent pool before turning them over to the track and field association for further development,” Tuason said.
De Vega-Mercado, one of the outstanding products of the Gintong Alay program in the late 70s, became the fastest woman in Asia and dominated the local sports scene like no other before her for over a decade.
She made her international debut in grand style by capturing two gold medals in the 1981 Manila Southeast Asian Games and amassed a trail of achievements in major competitions abroad that was second to none.
Since 1981, sports fans have practically lost count of the number of gold medals De Vega-Mercado had won for the Philippines in more than 10 years of regional and international tournaments.
De Vega-Mercado holds the distinction of being the only athlete other than Ester Roth of Israel to have won back-to-back gold medals in the 100-meter dash in the Asian Games.
She accomplished the feat first in the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi then duplicated the trick in the 1986 Seoul Games where she humbled famous archrival P.T. Usha of India.
De Vega-Mercado’s most trusted coach was “Tatang” De Vega-her retired policeman-father. With Tatang in tow, she trained in the US and other countries that offered the best in training facilities for athletes in track and field.
Retiring from competition after winning the sprint gold in the 1993 Singapore Southeast Asian Games, De Vega-Mercado has since shifted her focus to coaching.
Since her retirement, she has attended to her family full-time. She was also elected as Meycauayan, Bulacan councilor this year.
Tragedy struck De Vega-Mercado and husband Paolo in February this year when they lost their four-year-old son John Michael, who was hit by a passenger jeep while he was crossing the street on the way home from a neighbor’s house.
Shabby treatment
De Vega-Mercado, who was invited to lead the oath of the officiating officials as part of the program of the Batang Pinoy-Philippine National Youth Games in the City of Smiles, complained of shabby treatment she received from some PSC officials. Although she refused to be quoted directly, De Vega-Mercado said her rift with some of the PSC brass — strongly hinting at commissioners Richie Garcia and Amparo “Weena” Lim — began when her initial request to take the plane to this city after missing the boat ride to and from Bacolod was denied. She missed her boat ride due to the heavy traffic going from Meycauayan to Pier 2 where she had to ride in a Negros Navigation ship.
She decided to go back to the PSC and asked help from Commissioner William Ramirez, who in turn, agreed to give her a plane ride “charged to his account.” However, De Vega-Mercado learned that Lim, who is in-charge of the project Batang Pinoy, objected at the idea of giving her a plane ride.
De Vega-Mercado was spared the boat ride, which could have lasted up to 19 hours each way, only through the intercession of PSC Chairman Carlos Tuason and Ramirez.
It was Ramirez who supposedly took it upon himself to provide Mercado with the round-trip plane ticket after consulting with Tuason, who learned of the incident a day after arriving from a vacation in the United States.
She said it was at the airport where she turned down Lim’s invitation through her staff to stay at the Business Inn, telling them she preferred to be with her fellow officials from the athletics association.
She, however, chose to stay at the Negros Occidental High School where all the technical staff for athletics is quartered.
“Thanks but no thanks,” De Vega-Mercado purportedly retorted when the PSC officials reportedly tried to appease her later on. Tuason, according to his staff, was unaware of De Vega-Mercado’s situation since the Batang Pinoy is Lim’s responsibility. The PSC chief arrived from a vacation in the US only a day before the games were to start.
For her part, Lim, the Batang Pinoy’s project director, said she was totally unaware of De Vega-Mercado’s problems until she got to the city, saying it was just a case of a not-so-merry mix-up. Likewise, Lim said she was unaware De Vega-Mercado was going to be in the games and when she did find out, she was in no position to do anything to relieve the latter’s plight. “I didn’t even know that she had a part in the opening program since it was the government of the province of Negros and the City of Bacolod which were in-charge of the whole program,” Lim said.
Lim explained that when she learned that De Vega-Mercado was an invited person and had a part in the program, “I even asked my people to contact Lydia and asked her to stay in the Business Inn where she deserves to be.” Although she said she didn’t know De Vega-Mercado was a member of the athletics officials for the games, Lim admitted she was aware that the former sprint queen missed the Negros Navigation ship that left Manila for this city. “Much as I want to offer her a plane fare I couldn’t because we simply do not have any money to spare. Even my staff had to take the boat ride,” she said.
She also admitted telling the agency’s travel officer, Joanne Limon, to tell De Vega to take the next boat ride “if she wanted” to come to Bacolod, saying she was “only trying to be fair” given the Batang Pinoy’s limited 17-million pesos budget.
Only the event’s VIPs, such as top PSC officials and the tournament directors for each of the 14 sports in the games, were entitled to take Philippine Airlines flights here under the event’s budget plan, Lim said.
