Philippines' Olympic flop -- 19 August 2008

In any Olympic games most of the attention and money go to winning athletes from countries that invest heavily in sports.

But for many developing nations gold medals remain out of reach despite their people's love of sport.

The Philippines is one such country which always ends up punching below its weight in the Olympic arena, as Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas reports.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• china
• olympics
• philippines
• sports
• marga
• ortigas
• aljazeera

[onatdonuts]

The government's support isn't enough. Being an athlete in the Philippines means being poor. It really takes a lot of patriotism to be an athlete in this country as well as sacrifice to continue training without enough money to feed his family, even himself.

[crashdata]

i cant believe why the government didnt even help our ex olympian...

[blues2009mark]

We should be proud of our athletes support them more and the the government should support more of the sport that we are weak to and less support on the sports like basketball and billiards and they should try to bring more athletes to the Olympics too.

[9mmAlpha]

guys instead of wasting time in self pitty do something about it .... I have 10 y/o daughter , Im training her to become extremely good precision rifle shooter I can see her potential . kung marami tayo na gagawa ng ganito magiging malaki ang chance natin . i train nyo mga anak nyo . kung ang phil govt walang naitulong satin nung kabataan natin lets do it now for our kids. we have at least 8-12 yrs to prepare thats a very long time. ang pangarap di naabot sa salita kung hindi sa gawa.

[karlanvidal]

$220,000..pfftt..thats not true..last 1964 olympics in Japan..a Filipino athlete won a silver medal..close to gold but it was fabricated so the Soviet Union won..the boxer said that the government didn't gave any reward to him..so sad..

[joesel19]

@onatdonuts even our athletes use their moneys just to train that's a fact watch jessica soho special episode about olympics!?

[clawofraven12]

AL jazeera never reported good about Philippines.

[kistakol]

ang sekreto lang kung bakit nananalo ang ibang bansa kasi yung mga sumali sa olympic eh mga firsttimers at wala pang experince sa olympics eh ang pilipinas yung mga sumali nung nakaraang olympics na talunan eh sinasali payun din umuuwing talunan dapat yung sasali yung wala pang experience sa olympics dapat diyan mga bata tingnan niyo bakit yung mga pulis tuwing rally sa mendiola ang linalagay nila mga baguhan at yung mga matatanda sa likuran kasi alam nila ang mga baguhan hindi duwag

[trapped1000]

kaya yan nang mga filipinos!!!keep it up!!!sunod gold naman ahhhh!!!jejeje!!

[jairus1230]

ok lng yan maraming olympics na darating makaka gold din tau.. go pinas!

[smily2929]

shut up ur a big fat ugly person ur a bi gay lesbian or waever

[caburay]

Milo, mura pa.