Athletics and taekwondo bag two golds each for PHL
A new Games record and four gold medals were the highlights of a fairly productive haul by Team Philippines on the second day of competition at the 26th Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia, with athletics and taekwondo contributing two golds apiece, even as the hosts began pulling away in the overall medal count.
Long jumper Marestella Torres successfully defended her SEA Games title, setting a new meet record of 6.71 meters to bag the country's first gold medal early Saturday morning. The new mark bested the previous record, also held by Torres, of 6.67 meters set two years ago Laos. It's also a new Philippine record.
Later in the day, Rene Herrera came through in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a gold-medal winning time of 8:52.23 to bring the Philippines' total haul to four golds on top of two silvers and five bronzes, good enough for fifth place overall. The two silvers were courtesy of Joey Barba in the 1.5K mountain bike downhill race and the poomsae pair of Marvin Gabriel Vidal and Shaneen Ched Sia.
Athletics chipped in two bronzes from Khatherine Santos in the women's long jump and Loralie Sermona in the women's hammer throw, while karatedo also had two bronzes courtesy of OJ Delos Santos in the male individual kata and Erica Celin Samonte in the 50kg and below kumite. The fifth bronze came from Vidal in the male individual poomsae.
The news from other disciplines wasn't all good, though, as our badminton bets in the men's team and women's team events were ousted in the quarterfinals. The young swimming team also came up empty-handed, with Jose Joaquin Gonzales missing out on the bronze in the men's 400m individual medley by two seconds and Jasmine Alkhaidi finishing sixth in the women's 200m freestyle. Lee Dhill Anderson was also sixth in the men's 50m butterfly.
In the new SEAG sport of bridge, the men's team beat Singapore, 21-9, and Malaysia, 25-1, but lost to Thailand, 4-25, and Indonesia, 14-16. The women's team beat Thailand, 22-8, but bowed to Singapore, 14-16, and Indonesia, 11-19.
Softball produced mixed results, with the men's team falling to Indonesia, 2-4, and the women's team blasting Thailand, 10-1. Meanwhile, in sepak takraw, the Philippines lost to Indonesia, 3-0 in men's regu.
Host Indonesia was a juggernaut on several fronts, bagging 20 gold medals today to raise its total to 22, which was more than the combined golds of Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. At the end of the day, Indonesia stood at 22-15-10, followed by Singapore's 8-7-8. First-day leader Thailand, which won three golds yesterday, won another three and was at third with a 6-9-9 count. Vietnam was fourth with 6-7-10.
The hosts struck heavily in karatedo (five gold medals), roller sport (four), athletics (four), and taekwondo (three). As usual, Singapore ruled the pool with four golds and two silvers in swimming.
It will be another heavy day on Sunday Team Philippines, with Filipino bets seeing action in 11 of 12 athletics events, as well as in 11 other sports including billiards, bridge, diving, men's football, gymnastics, pentaque, softball, sport climbing, sepak takraw, swimming, tennis and water polo.
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