Article by Andrew Pirie
ATFS Statistician
The Philippines finished 6th place overall again the ASEAN School Games 2017. With earlier DEPED bosses hoping for a 2nd or 3rd place finish.
It was surprising as Athletics with 4 golds and Swimming with 7 golds had the most golds each sport has had as these games.since the modern reincarnation of these games began in 2009. Please note athletics did very well to get 4 after getting 2 Golds in 2014 and 2015. But the biggest success story of these games is Swimming which never had a gold before in the ASEAN School Games and in 2014 had 0 medals at all. A write up on swimming is possibly coming that is a great story. As Swimming really abided to the principles of fair selection for these games this time with a more consistent selection process put in place. Swimming from 0 to 7 golds. The other golds came from Girls Basketball and 1 from JUSTINE ACE DE LEON in the individual vault final.
The Philippines 13 Golds was still the most they have ever had at an ASEAN School Games with the previous best haul being 11 Golds when they hosted in Marikina in 2014.
Full Medal Tables of the ASG 2009-2017 can be found on Wikipedia
Lets look at this in %. In 2014 we had 11 of 123 golds or 8.94%, in 2017 they had 13 of 133 golds 9.7%. So why is it with this increase we dropped from 4th to 6th. We will not count silvers and bronzes for this analysis as they dont count towards the final medal count unless there is a tie on golds.
Take into account Philippines didn’t join in 2016, but we will use this as an example for the other nations involved.
Firstly its good to see 10 Nations of the 11 in SEA all now except Timor Leste join the 2017 ASEAN School Games. This games however 5 major SEA Nations shared more than 15% each of the total golds Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
Whereas in the last games not more than 4 SEA Nations were getting more than 15% of the medals.
More emphasis must be placed on larger teams in Athletics, Swimming and Gymnastics over team sports (if need be) as these are the medal rich events in order to increase the overall placing of the team.
Athletics for example had 18 medals from 26 Athletes. They need to be allowed to increase this number to 40 in 2018. And regarding selection all Palaro Champions should be included.
Thailand and Vietnam in which Athletics is their focus sport won 15 and 14 golds in Athletics alone.
Indonesia which seems to have focused more on swimming got 20 of its 25 golds in this sport or 80% of all its golds.
So should the Philippines focus more on Swimming or Athletics?
