Vargas scouting for PH 2028 Olympic team base
LAS VEGAS—Ricky Vargas, who will be the Philippines’ chef de mission in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, is, this early, already hard at work to make sure that the Filipino delegation in three years’ time will be most comfortable in the Games.
Vargas has shopped around LA for a potential home for PH athletes, which he expects to be between 22 and 30, with gymnastics wonder Carlos Yulo expected to lead the delegation’s medal hunt.
The amiable executive has looked at the facilities of Loyola Marymount, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Pepperdine University, describing the dorms of those schools which Philippine athletes may occupy as “nothing short of magnificent.”
Anticipation for the next Olympics is at an all-time high in the Philippines after Yulo became the first Filipino to win two golds in one edition, doing it in Paris last year.
Home-type structure
Three years before, weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo snapped a century-old wait for the country’s breakthrough gold medal when she outsmarted a Chinese ace in the 55-kilogram women’s finals in Tokyo 2020.
Diaz-Naranjo’s 224-kg effort (97 kg in the snatch and 127 kg in the clean and jerk) was one kilo better than China’s Liao Qiuyun.
Vargas bared that the first choice is the Loyola Marymount campus, only to be told that a “different country, that they don’t want to name” had already booked accommodations for its athletes for LA 2028.
“I actually thought I was here early,” Vargas told the Inquirer. He was in LA on Thursday last week before making his way to here for the PBA’s annual board meeting. He is the chairperson of the board for the last eight PBA seasons.
A home-type structure is also being eyed by Vargas, who will use it to house the coaches and officials of the delegation and at the same time make it a “viewing place for Filipinos who cannot get tickets to watch our athletes live to see the games there.”
“So we are eyeing to have a festive atmosphere there during the Games, where all our ‘kababayans’ can watch,” he said.
