WATCH: PH team chief Richard Gomez eyes more Asiad medals

JAKARTA, Indonesia – For the first time in five days, no medal dropped into the Philippine coffers.

But Team Philippines chef de mission Richard Gomez expects more medals as some favored bets start their bids in the 2018 Asian Games.

Jiu-jitsu led by Meggie Ochoa and Annie Ramirez as well as boxing bannered by 2017 Southeast Asian Games gold medalist Eumir Felix Marcial will start their campaigns on Friday, August 24.

The Philippines fell to 18th spot in the medal tally board on Thursday, August 23 with one gold and five bronze medals.

China, on the other hand, breached the 100-medal mark with 51 gold, 36 silver and 30 bronze medals with a good nine days more to go in the Games. Japan was a far second with 23-26-30 gold-silver-bronze haul and South Korea was further back in third with 15-20-27.

Gymnastics

The country pinned its hopes on Carlos Yulo, who entered the men’s floor exercise final of gymnastics as the top-ranked athlete but wound up second to last—no thanks to a daring routine he couldn’t complete—to bomb out of a podium finish. 

“Nagkamali po (I made a mistake),” said Yulo, the 2018 World Cup silver medalist who finished seventh among the eight finalists.

Yulo carried a front-running 14.500 score from Wednesday’s preliminaries to the final, but failed to sustain fine form in his routine, committing a fatal error in execution to finish with 13.500. He had a difficulty rating of 6.100 and an execution score of 7.400. 

“That was a very difficult routine,” Gymnastics’ Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carreon said. “But he should have gotten more (points).”

Carreon had high hopes for Yulo and so did top officials of the Team Philippines here. Yulo was a medal potential—a gold at that—following his gold medal finish in the Doha World Cup where he beat Rio de Janeiro Olympics champion Ryohei Kato, pushing the Japanese to the bronze medal.

But Yulo wasn’t in his elements when it mattered most, allowing Korea’s Kim Hansol to frolic toward the gold with a 14.675 score, Taiwan’s Tang Chiahung to the silver with 14.425 and China’s Lin Chaopan to the bronze with 14.225.

Bridge

Elsewhere was bleak for the 272-athlete strong Philippine delegation.

The Philippines’ bridge team composed of Alberto Quiogue, Joseph Roman Maliwat Jr. III, Kong Te Yang, Romulo Virola, Eleazar Cabanilla and Andrew Falcon finished 10th overall during the Men’s Team Qualification Round 7 with its overall score of 61.74.

Getting a better placing of seventh but still out of the running was the other PH Bridge Team of Gemma Milagros Mariano, Mary Cristy Ann de Guzman, Victoria Egan, Francis Allen Tan, George Soo and Francisco Alquiros in the Super Mixed Team Qualification Round 5 with its 43.85.

Taekwondo

Also coming up empty-handed was taekwondo jin Arven Alcantara, who absorbed a 5-26 beating at the hands of World No.1 and back-to-back Asian Games gold medalist Daehoon Lee in the Men’s -68 kg quarterfinals.

Lee was also the silver medalist in the 58kg division of the 2012 London Olympics and the 68kg category of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics sa Brazil.

Prior to this, Baby Jessica Canabal also fell to Nahid Kiyanichandeh of Iran, 15-23 in the women’s -49 kg quarterfinals.

Sport climbing

In sport climbing, Gerald Verosil found the going rough and  bowed out of the men’s speed event after finishing 19th in the eliminations at the Jakabaring Sports City in Palembang.

The Singapore-based Verosil lost his grip early in scaling up the 12-meter (37-foot), man-made wall to clock 10.66 seconds on his first try before improving  slightly with 7.95 seconds on his second attempt.

Bowling

In Palembang, a medal remained elusive for Filipino bowlers for the second straight day on Thursday.

The No. 1 team of Kenneth Chua, Merwin Tan and Enzo Hernandez wound up in 10th place in men’s trios at the Jakabaring Bowling Center.

Similar to their women’s counterparts the previous day, the Filipino troika couldn’t cluster their big games together, combining for a six-games series tally of 4134, 210 pins off the victorious Japanese triumvirate of Tomuyuki Sasaki, Shogo Wada and Shusako Asato, with 4344.

Malaysia (4235) bagged the silver, narrowly relegating Singapore (4226) to the bronze medal at the sold-out bowling arena built specifically for this sportsfest.

The other PH squad of Jomar Jumapao, Kenzo Umali and Raoul Miranda combined for a meager 3777, languishing in 27th place out of 33 teams. – with reports from Beatrice Go/Rappler.com