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By Musong R. Castillo

BANGKOK, Thailand--The key to success, it seems, does not lie in preparations made at home.

Swimming, the biggest contributor to the Philippines' meager gold medal cache, drew its strength from tankers who trained in the United States.

Together, they put away all the RP team's gold medals in the pool at the just-concluded 24th Southeast Asian Games in faraway Nakhon Ratchasima province.

Eight of the paltry 41 golds won by the country in the 11-nation, biennial conclave came from the sport, with Miguel Molina winning three titles and sharing in the victory of a relay quartet.

Molina, the 23-year-old who holds a degree in human relations from the University of California at Berkeley, has trained in the US ever since the Philippine Amateur Swimming Association plucked him from age-group competitions early in his career.

He became the saving grace for the battered RP delegation at the Games by winning the Most Valuable Player (male) award, the third such time the prestigious citation has been bestowed on a Filipino.

The two others who won the plum were also swimmers--Eric Buhain in 1991 and Akiko Thomson in 1989.

"We make sure that they (RP swimmers) become good enough to be offered scholarships in the US, so they can train there," Mark Joseph, also a former national swimmer and now president of the Pasa, said.

"With that, we know that they are in good hands. We simply don't have the technology that they have there [in the US]," added Joseph, also the deputy secretary-general of the Philippine Olympic Committee.

Asked why only the Fil-Americans in the team shone for the Philippines, Joseph said his charges were all pure Filipinos.

He said the gold medalists were "100 percent Filipinos who just happened to be born somewhere else and then trained in the US because that is the Mecca of swimming."

"I trained in the US, so did Ral [Rosario] and Eric [Buhain], but we were never called Fil-Ams," Joseph explained.

Singapore, which pipped the Philippines for fifth overall and sealed the worst RP finish ever in the games, also trains its finest swimmers abroad.

"What we have achieved--a big number of silver and bronze medals--tells us that they (opponents) prepared better than we did," Philippine Sports Commissioner chair William "Butch" Ramirez said.

Not only did Molina--who was born in Japan to Filipino parents-- Ryan Arabejo, JB Walsh and Daniel Coakley win gold medals in the SEAG, they are now all going to the Olympics in Beijing next year.

"We know that we can compete in the world level," said Joseph. "What we really need is to fund these people because their scholarships don't cover their travel expenses."

Joseph said that he had written the PSC at least three times to fund Molina's training for the Beijing Olympics, which costs about $3,000 (about P123,000) a month.

Molina has left school and now needs to enter a personal training program under renowned swim coach Dave Salo.

The Pasa president is hopeful that someone from the private sector would step forward and foot Molina's bill.

Coakley, the 6-foot-1, 17-year-old great grandson of two-time Olympic bronze medalist Teofilo Yldefonso, was the fastest man in the pool after shattering the SEAG's 50-meter freestyle mark.

He plans to move out of Hawaii to train and study, along with Arabejo, at Bolles school and be under the guidance of Sergio Lopez, the former Olympic gold medalist from Spain.


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