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What is there to write about historic firsts when the country is shaken? Alex Eala ending her season at number 50 in the world, the highest placement by a Filipino in tennis, does not still moving plates, nor bring food to empty plates.

What is there to write about promising young athletes when the country is stormed? The Philippine youth team that hauled 7-7-10 gold-silver-bronze medals in the Asian Youth Games does not tame a raging typhoon. Neither does it calm heavenly rage nor increase earthly minimum wage, or the living wage that kills the living.

It may represent the future of Philippine sports but not the future of the Filipino youth dimmed and damned by the country’s education system, its yearly budget in the backseat, with debt servicing getting the biggest slice for services that do not serve the people, with a bigger slice devoured by corruption and the icing splurged by nepo babies.

What is there to write about an heir apparent to the greatest Filipino athlete when the country is under water? The son of a boxer flashier than Gabriel Elorde winning a boxing match and winning more attention for his look does not subside deadly flood. He sure looks better than his father, but whether he boxes harder is another matter altogether. His budding career does not punish the robbers in broad daylight and the thieves in the dead of the night while the people suffer every minute, day and night.

There is nothing to write about Filipino athletes winning or losing while their poor and powerless countrymen and women keep on losing in the arena of life. Eala won 40 but lost 26 matches, career or season is not clear, but she won more than she lost matches. EJ Obiena won here and there but did not medal in the big one, without reference to the feared magnitude of world breaking, but the worlds, where Carlos Yulo won with precision.

John Ceniza lost before competing, the weightlifter is suspended for two years for three whereabouts failure. He also lost after winning, his previous results this year voided, medals, points and prizes forfeited. Likewise banned earlier for two years was his co-Olympian Vanessa Sarno for similar offense. Not necessarily positive for drugs, but both failed to prove they are negative either.

Regardless, none of it compares to so many wrongs to right in this country, only if its people can tell right from wrong and know how to right a wrong. For, a twisted mind cannot iron flat the crooked blind nor jail the crocs who stole billions for flood control while life and property drown.

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