This is not a basketball story.
And I wouldn’t blame you for expecting one, because basketball has been our sport for God knows how long. It’s like religion and Jollibee, if you ask me—it’s everywhere and it’s probably all you want.
No, this isn’t about basketball. It’s about bikes. Do you even have a bike?
God bless you if you have one, and if you actually ride it. I know a lot of young people would rather sit it out playing online games rather than go out and ride a bike. Or if they did ride a bike, it’s to be hip and not much else. I’ve even heard of twentysomethings not even knowing how to ride a bike.
But this is a sport we could really be good at. I’ve been a writer covering sports for well over two decades and I’ve studied the lore of the great Marlboro Tour era and am now following our current cycling scene in Ronda Pilipinas to know this to be true.
I remember during my teens in the ‘90s when I used to read in the newspapers how people packed the Marlboro Tour finish line just to watch the likes of Carlo Guieb and Renato Dolosa try to outdo and outsmart each other. I envied people who were there to witness their exceptional feat of finishing and winning a 21-stage race. It was an era when cycling was not that far behind basketball in terms of popularity. But after the Tour folded, it wasn’t the same anymore.
Good thing cycling is slowly but surely getting back to its feet, thanks to more races in the country now including the LBC Ronda Pilipinas 2019, which has just finished its ninth edition.
Ronda Pilipinas closely resembles the Marlboro Tour of old. Like it, Ronda is doing multi-stage races, from as short as 10 stages to as long as 16. And like the fabled Tour, it traverses the whole Philippines from as far up North in Abra to deep down South in General Santos.
Since its inception, Ronda has been keen on spotting potential cycling champions that it could tap, train, and send to international competitions including the Olympics and Tour de France. It’s best products to date are Ronald Oranza, the 2018 Ronda king and the 2019 Best Filipino rider; El Joshua Carino, the 2018 Le Tour champion; and Junrey Navarra, the many-time King of the Mountain. They’re all from Navy-Standard Insurance, the strongest cycling team in the country today. More are coming.
And Ronda is not stopping until it actually sends a Filipino racer to the Olympics, or better, the Tour de France. It is the reason Moe Chulani, Ronda executive project director, has registered Ronda to the Union Cycliste International (UCI), the sport’s world governing body, to its 2019 edition to gain qualifying points to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. The goal is to send a Filipino rider there for the first time since Norberto Oconer made it that far two straight times in 1988 in Seoul, South Korea and 1992 in Barcelona, Spain. And so far, so good.
“The ultimate dream of LBC Ronda Pilipinas is to enter a Filipino in the Tour de France as well as the Olympics. We will never stop until we achieve those two goals,” Chulani says. “That is why we went to UCI to sanction our race and try to get as many Olympic qualifying points as we can.”
Without Ronda and other races, it would be complete cycling darkness.
It also helps that, apart from the powerhouse Navy-Standard Insurance team, the country has two Continental Teams—7Eleven and Go for Gold.
To differentiate a non-continental from a continental squad, the former doesn’t get you outright invitations to UCI-sanctioned races while the latter can. And if the country plays its chips right, we may end up achieving the Tour de France and Olympic dream.
I really think we can.
If a Manny Pacquiao can emerge out of boxing, why can’t a Filipino produce a Chris Froome, a Geraint Thomas, a Miguel Indurain or a Greg LeMond? Heck, count Lance Armstrong minus the alleged performance enhancing drugs issues.
“We’re doing our very best to produce a Manny Pacquiao of cycling,” Chulani says.
Photos courtesy of Ronda Pilipinas
Joey Villar is a sportswriter for The Philippine Star