Sports bits

Batang Pinoy unveils in Palawan

The 4th annual Batang Pinoy games get underway in Puerto Princesa, Palawan from Sunday, December 1, as entries in various sports events swarmed beyond the expected 3,500 participants.

Competitions will be in 21 sports -- athletics, badminton, boxing, chess, baseball, softball, dancesports, football, gymnastics, judo, karatedo, lawn tennis, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball, arnis, golf, triathlon, weightlifting and wrestling. Triathlon, wrestling and weightlifting are new additions to the annual event.

There will be age group competitions in various sports -- including the six-under group, 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12 brackets. A total of 482 gold medals will be disputed in the games spread over seven days ending Dec. 8.

The main venue of the competitions is the Puerto Princesa sports complex inside Santa Monica Heights in Puerto Princesa.

Last year's games were held in Bacolod City, which had hosted the meet twice in three years, having inaugurated the event in 1998.

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Leongson rules Motocross series

Multi-titled rider Ernie Leongson opted not to take any chances and simply shadowed leg winner Glenn Aguilar, as he formally captured the premier Pro Open title of the Superferry National Motocross Super Series 2002 November 23 at the PAMRI Racetracks, Army Adventure Zone in Taguig, Metro Manila.

With the title (Pro Open - Rider of the Year) already in his mantle even before the start of the seventh leg, Shell-Yamaha's Leongson did not bother to do some overtaking stuff and simply enjoyed the thrill of the ride.

Leongson was most impressive in the Pro 125 division which he topped, ahead of eventual champion Jovie Saulog, a teammate.

Providing stiff competition to the perennial champion Leongson is another by-word in Philippine motor sport, Glenn Aguilar, who won the last leg to complete an up-and-down season.

"It would have been a different scenario had I been able to complete all the seven legs, but it's all part of the game. Bawi na lang ako next year," said Aguilar, who missed three of the seven legs due to a back injury.

"It was a very successful Superferry Motocross event and we look forward to a longer series next year. We're talking of probably 12 legs here, " said Richard Gomez, chairman of the Kabataang Iwas Droga ng Sports (KIDS) Foundation, which co-organized the event.

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Swimming body imposes EPO tests

FINA (Federation Nationale de Natation Amateur), the international governing body for all swimming meets, has required testing for the endurance-boosting hormone EPO (erythropoeitin) before any world record can be approved.

The body also established that the combined blood and urine samples will be taken from all record-setting swimmers. The tests also will look for substances related to EPO like darbopoeitin.

Blood tests were conducted on swimmers setting a world record at the European championships in July, with the European Swimming Federation spending about US$30,000, beyond the regular budget for doping control.

Testing for EPO was first conducted at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. But FINA was not using the tests in its own events, stating that blood testing for EPO was still not reliable enough and presented too many medical and legal questions.

EPO is a hormone naturally produced by the body but now available as genetically engineered product. It builds endurance, artificially increasing the level of red blood cells, supplying high amounts of oxygen to the muscles.

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Django wins again in Japan

Django Bustamante won the 35th All-Japan Championship November 24 in Osaka for his second straight international pool title in the land of the rising sun in merely two weeks.
Django vanquished the power of 2001 world pool champion Mika Immonen 11-8 in the finals after the Finn beat legendary Efren Reyes in a tighly-fought semifinals.

Django's triumph came two weeks after winning over International Player of the Year, Ralf Soquet of Germany in the IBC 9-Ball championship in Tokyo.

The only major championship the Reyes-Bustamante duo had not seized in their post-Asiad campaigns abroad were the World Pool Masters in England where Reyes did not get his game going in losing to Soquet in the finals. The highly-feared duo also skipped the US Open in Virginia to play in the Asian Games.

But Reyes successfully defended his title in the World Pool League in Poland the week after the Soquet loss in October. In all the two legendary Filipinos bagged four of the five major international titles.

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