Olympians infuse life into Filipinos’ SEAG campaign

By Riera U. Mallari

PHNOM PENH—Tokyo Olympians Carlo

Paalam and Nesthy Petecio of boxing, and weightlifting’s Elreen Ando led the charge of the cavalry, infusing life into the Philippines’ sagging campaign with the team’s biggest daylong haul of nine golds in the 32nd Southeast Asian Games here on Sunday.

Olympic silver medalists Paalam and Petecio led a 3-of-5 golden finish by the Filipino boxers, while Ando smashed three records on the way to the -59kg weightlifting gold to help the Philippines surge past Singapore at fifth place in the medal standings.

Their wins, to go with the victory of light welterweight boxer Paul Bascon, the two golds in arnis, plus triumphs in judo, esports and wrestling handed the Filipinos a total harvest of 46 golds to Singapore’s 42 as of 8 p.m.

Paalam, who bagged a silver while fighting in the flyweight class in Tokyo, dominated Aldoms Suguro of Indonesia to rule the men’s bantamweight class, while Petecio was simply too much against her Indonesian rival Ratna Sari Devi in the women’s featherweight division.

Bascon scored a split decision over Rujakran Juntrong of Thailand as the Filipinos wrapped up their campaign with four gold medals, counting featherweight Ian Clark Bautista’s win last Saturday.

The 24-year-old Ando started the Phil-