EDITORS DESK
With the action still hitting fever pitch five days before Phnom Penh extinguishes the torch of the 32nd Southeast Asian Games, one could easily notice the roster of athletes that Cambodia has fielded to put up its best showing in the regional meet since debuting in 1961.
Cambodia, tasked to complete an exhaustive job of catering 586 events in 36 sports, has paraded naturalized athletes to represent the country against its neighboring giants — not one, but a battalion of them.
Our nation's treasure, Efren "Bata" Reyes, got shut down early when a Cambodian with a Korean lineage showed him the door in men's 3-cushion carom single event.
The men's and women's 3x3 basketball teams were dwarfed by players from the United States in the competition they were supposed to dominate.
Kim Mangrobang, the jewel of triathlon and a three-time individual champion, lost to a Cambodian with French roots; she settled for a silver.
A perennial source of medals, the national boxers could see themselves fighting a different breed after the host country decided to tap Uzbekistan contenders in heavier weight classes.
And the story could go elsewhere, with Cambodia, a first-time host, appearing to secure all possibilities to rake in as many medals in a bid to create a piece of sporting history.
The SEA Games is designed to prioritize the wishes of the hosts, and implement it the way the other competing nations can only oblige. Of course, one can have a mouthful of protest.
Aside from arranging the sports that will be played, from adding native games, to removing events that they were unsuccessful in prior meets, Cambodia extended its own set of rules by allowing athletes with foreign blood to represent a country if they are passport holders. This year's hosts maximized this leeway to the fullest.
Many were baffled by this rule, which has earned the ire of netizens, sports officials, and the athletes themselves. We can’t deny that our own contingent has Justin Brownlee, the beloved basketball star who had pledged to don our national colors in every way possible. But Brownlee is on his lonesome. In fact, he is expected to play against six naturalized Cambodians and three Indonesians with western roots.
Discussions on the games focused on this. The scene in Phnom Penh and other playing venues gives a crystal clear message: Winning at all costs has gone beyond the borders of fair play, the true meaning of the SEA Games. This could be a spark plug, or a change of order, that in retrospect would say: twisting rules and crossing the limits of powers can outweigh the value of sportsmanship.
It is a home court advantage we did not expect to see.
(Ramon Rafael C. Bonilla is the head of Sports section of Manila Bulletin.)