Two silver medals from the Olympics will be presented for all to see during the regular Monday flag ceremony at the Baguio City Hall grounds tomorrow.
Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam will be donning their silver medals, while Eumir Marcial will show off his bronze medal during the 8AM ceremonies at the City Hall grounds to start another week of work for city government employees.
Irish Magno, who failed to get past the preliminaries last August in Tokyo, will be there too as the four-member Philippine boxing team, present and past University of Baguio students, meet top city officials who will in turn given the two silver medal winners and their respective coaches the PhP500,000 cash reward for the athletes and PhP100,000 for the coaches, each.
It will be the biggest amounts to be given to city recognized athletes under a new sports code as the city buckles to give the needed support for local athletes. That is on top of a modern sports complex that will rise at the Baguio athletic bowl.
Paalam has been in Baguio since November 12 as he starts his preparation for the 2021 Southeast East Asian Games in Hanoi, Vietnam that was delayed for May 2022 due to the Covid-19 surge in said country.
“The four will be at City Hall tomorrow,” said former national coach Glicerio Catolico, Jr., now a proud administrator of a building with a parking space at the foot of Lourdes Grotto.
Catolico was instrumental in bringing the athletes to the city and study at UB. “Eumir was already in the city as early as 2016 and the others were here even earlier as they were given scholarship by the school,” he said.
From there, the boxers and their coaches will be given a motorcade. “The city sports development office service pick up has been cleaned in time for Monday’s motorcade,” said CSDO head Gaudencio Gonzales at his office at the Baguio athletic bowl.
After the motorcade, the boxers and their coaches will have lunch with UB president Javier Herminio Bautista at the school.
Petecio will visit the School of International Hotel Tourism Management where she is enrolled, while Magno, the School of Criminology where she is enrolled with Josie Gabuco, a former world boxing champion and several time gold medalist in the SEAG.
Petecio fell to Sena Irie last August 3, and Paalam came short of a third round rally to British fighter Galal Yafai from a first round knockdown during the finals on August 3 and 7, respectively.
“This is the best gift for us,” said then UB athletic director Alan Elegado, right after Paalam loss in the men’s flyweight championship at the Kokugikan Arena. Elegado died last Novfember after a brief bout with cancer.
