Republic Act 6847 is very clear. On Section 13.i only the National Sports Association (NSA) and not the POC has the right to select its coaches and athletes to International and local events. Sports loving people all over the country are asking me up to now on what happened in the recent Paris Olympics. Our Association, Samahang Weightlifting ng Pilipinas, selected and sent four national coaches, led by national and Olympic coach Antonio Agustin of Zamboanga with Bohol Coach Nick Jaluag, who discovered and trained Vanessa Sarno for more than 15 years, Cebu Coach Chris Borreros who trained Cebu lifters John Fabuar Ceniza, and Elreen Ando, and Coach Patrick LIm, who acted as our group leader in Paris. We were told to train in the Metz, Paris one month before the competition for climaization, yet ended up with only two weeks, when our team discovered the equipments offered for our training where sub standard. So we lost around two weeks of proper training which foreced us to move over to Germany, where the right equipments were given. Thank God. Or we could have trained properly in Rizal Memorial and leave just two weeks before our actual event in Paris. That would have sufficed.

But more tragedy was coming. I arrived just few days before the opening of the Olympics and learned upon arrival, that one of our national coaches, whom we suspended in Cebu two months before for assaulting a young Cebuano lifter during our National Open, who broke a national record then, was also in Paris to cause us more trouble. Worse, this fellow was selected by the Philippine Olympic Committee officials, to coach Vanessa Sarno, upon her request. Not knowing that our SWP records showed that every time this particular coach was with Sarno in several international events she always lost, while her other coach from Bohol for fifteen years, assisted her in winning gold in the SEA and Asian games. POC paid his trip and gave him all the accreditation cards needed, while Sarno's original coach for 15 years was billeted outside the athletes village. In the recent Senate hearing, POC claimed that it was Sarno who requested for this. You know what? It took golden girl Hidilyn Diaz four Olympics to request for her own coach after winning a silver medal in the Brazil Olympics. And this was only a first time for Sarno. To make the long story short, what happened? Both lifters who requested for another coach made zero performance in their respective weights in the Games. Not even one lift? What was POC trying to prove? That they know better? And possibly claim credit for it? Cycling, which POC officials also head, hasn't even won a single medal in the Asian Games for more than 10 years or more now. If I don't say the truth now, will they do these same meddling in the Los Angeles Olympics four years from now? Just like that? And get away with it? Who are the victims here aside from us? The two young upcoming lifters. One of them, Fabuar, could have won a silver medal or bronze, had he lifted his ordinary weights in past international events.In these age of digitalization, where even kinders phone each other, they didn't have the decency to communicate with us. Maybe their phones run out of battery?