By Bohol Chronicle
Virtually unknown to many sports fans in this new generation, the late congressman Simeon Toribio of Carmen,
Bohol is one of the country's outstanding athletes this year.
Exactly 80 years ago, Toribio gifted the Philippines a medal in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. The Cong. Simeon Toribio Memorial District Hospital was erected in his honor.
Reports from Manila say Chief Justice Reynato Puno will be the guest of honor when nine Filipino and the 1954 national quintet are enshrined in the Philippine Sports Hall of Fame on May 5 at the Maynilad Hall of the Manila Hotel.
Puno, the country's 23rd Chief Justice and a sportswriter in his college years at the University of the Philippines, will keynote the ceremony which will formally induct the likes of the late boxers Gabriel "Flash" Elorde, Francisco "Pancho Villa" Guilledo and Ceferino Garcia into the Hall of Fame.
The Hall of Fame organizing committee headed by Arturo Macapagal of the Philippine Olympians Association and Philippine Sports Commission chair Harry Angping made the choice of Puno as guest speaker.
"He is apolitical," Angping said of Puno, who is retiring from his post on May 17.
Also getting the nod of the screening committee composed of a select group of veteran sportswriters are Olympians Jose "Cely" Villanueva and his son Anthony, Miguel White, Simeon Toribio, Teofilo Yldefonso, Carlos Loyzaga and the Philippine team that won the bronze medal in the 1954 World Basketball Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Some of the awardees like Loyzaga and Villanueva and members of the basketball team are expected to attend the ceremony.
Elorde (junior lightweight), Guilledo (flyweight) and Garcia (middleweight) held world boxing titles at the height of their careers.
Cely Villanueva captured the country's first Olympic medal in boxing - a bronze in the 1932 Los Angeles Games.
His son, Anthony, won the country's first Olympic silver medal in the featherweight division in the 1964 Tokyo Games.
As the country's first Olympic hero, Yldefonso, won two Olympic bronze medals, a feat no Filipino athlete has matched. He won the 200m breastroke bronze medals in the 1928 Amsterdam and 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
Like Cely Villanueva and Yldefonso, Toribio gifted the country with a bronze in men's high jump in the 1932 Games. White, the country's only Olympics athletics medalist, snared the bronze in the men's 400-m hurdles in the 1936 Berlin Games.
Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=27577.0