Newly re-elected Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) President Abraham Tolentino called for national selections for the chess event of the 31st Southeast Asian Games scheduled November 2021 in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Tolentino won a hotly contested battle in the POC elections late last year, winning 30-22 over Clint Aranas of the Archery Federation. Tolentino’s ticket got three of the four spots on the POC executive board. In total, 53 people representing the national sports associations and various sports sectors cast their votes. All the elected officials will serve four-year terms that will last until just after the 2024 Paris Olympics. The new batch of POC officials began their new four-year term on Jan. 1st 2021.
Tolentino is long serving Secretary General of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines and former FIDE Secretary General.
Tolentino plans on lobbying for the resumption of training of all national athletes and not just the country’s Olympic hopefuls for Tokyo.
He said coming international events are the 3rd Asian Youth Games in Shantou, Guandong, China 20-28 November 2021, Southeast Asian Games 21 November to 2 December 2021 and the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) March 2022 in Thailand.
Tolentino also shared that coming off a tough 2020 and a highly contentious POC election in November, they in the agency can move on and accomplish more under his latest term.
“The push is the same for me. Despite the hardships that we had last year and the limitations, I think we still accomplished some things. Coming from that experience, maybe we can handle the challenges moving forward. We survived, even if we were a minority in the executive board. So, now we have a new majority and maybe we have more good vibes towards a new direction,” Tolentino said at the Philippine Sportswriters Association Forum.