HE swimming world is in an up roar because of the body suits.

Body suits—or should I say, nutcrackers—are so tight that if an ordinary Juan wears it, he’d probably doubt if he’d ever sire a child.
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IN just one night, I saw a legend and a legend to be. One is barely in his teens but has the maturity level of an adult, while the other is a kid forever trapped in a 50-year-old body.

Both are also very humble.
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EVER since the Sportswriters Association of Cebu started getting more active last year, one of the “unfortunate activities” of the group was joining basketball tournaments.

It’s heaven-sent for other members, but I call it unfortunate for the simple reason that I can’t shoot a basketball even if it means winning a date with Maria Sharapova.

There may be a lot of basketball-loving folks in the group, and some could shoot a trey blindfolded, but it doesn’t mean a SAC basketball team is a good one.
Against SAC, the opposing team only has to show up on time to beat the group.

And teams, no matter how small the contest, it seems always want SAC on the opposing side.

I guess it helps with their league’s publicity if they include a bunch of sportswriters in the mix.

Enter Dave Ting, Dennis Que and Dave Lim—our three SAC imports.

The three Ds are the reason why SAC made it to the semis in a couple of tournaments. They are also the reason why, in SAC’s first tournament, we could afford to have a “practice player,” a gulat coach, “spiritual adviser,” and a “defensive coordinator,” moping in the sidelines while they save us from the latest hole we got ourselves into.

I’m reminded of the 3 Ds help to SAC because of the foiled comeback of the RP team against Chinese Taipei in the Jones Cup.

Against Chinese Taipei A, the Philippines erased a 16-point deficit, only to fall short.

Against one of the best teams in the IBP league, the Super Idols, SAC erased a 23-point deficit, only to fall short.

It was by far, the greatest foiled comeback I ever found myself with. I was that practice player.

We could have won, if not for Lim’s missed free throw, but you don’t blame a workhorse you whipped till he could give everything he could for missing a single step, can you?

We erased a 23-point lead and lost by seven, in overtime. Minus the three imports, we could have trailed by 50 at half time.

When the Super Idols were ahead by 20, Lim and Que—who are multiple MVP winners in the City’s oldest alumni league— perhaps embarrassed to be in a team that trailed that much, started working.a

And with three seconds left, we were down 62-60 and Lim had a chance to ice it for us after he was fouled in the three-point line.

We didn’t win, of course. Had we won it, it would have been a banner story splashed in the three papers’s main sports page, complete with stats, interviews and sidelight too.

But thanks to the three imports, SAC doesn’t suck, in basketball.

Because of the three, SAC has the courage to face lawyers, teachers, architects, even in their leagues, and win, too.

BINARY BOWLING. A few members of SAC went bowling, the other night, at SM, thanks to M. of SM (Who said, like a certain editor/vocalist, he saw the light and didn’t become a priest).

There was a bowling tournament on one part of the lanes and it was quite fortunate that they didn’t realize the people on the other side of the alley were sportswriters.

They would have stormed us, “You’re the guys who write ‘only scored a 190’ and you can’t hit a darn pin!!!”

Save for one editor and a columnist, who hit the high 100s, the rest of us barely scratched 100.

If they placed pins in the “canals,” we would have hit a perfect game. One member though, finished one digit short of a perfect game.

That member, who shall forever remain anonymous, had a binary score in the first seven frames: “0 0 0 0 1 0 1,” en route to a 30.

Just one zero short of a 300.

After copying the bowlers’s kick in his throw, the binary score guy managed to hit a few strikes.

OSCAR dela Hoya, for all the questions regarding his fading skills in his last years as an active boxer, is one astute promoter.

While everyone thinks that everything that can be done to promote a card—staged press con brawls to short reality TVish shows—has been done, dela Hoya, the owner of Golden Boy Promotions, has discovered a novelty.
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WOULD a normal student, after finishing a four-year course, transfer to another school to study for just one year?

Would you?

It sounds crazy. But apparently, the Cesafi thinks otherwise.
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I GUESS it’s a testament to Manny Pacquiao’s popularity if fighters are throwing everything at him—and the kitchen sink—to get a multi-million fight with him.
Short of giving away the keys to his house, Sugar Shane Mosley almost gave up everything to get a Pacquiao fight.

He didn’t.
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HOW could a guy, who lost his serve only once, lose to a guy whose serve got broken twice?

When he’s facing The Goat, of course.
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WHEN Nonito Donaire Jr. retires, he can sure pick up another profession as a writer—a good one.

Junior recently launched his own site, www.filipinoflash.com, and wrote a touching entry about his father and namesake in his blog for Fathers’ Day.
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FOR 45 minutes, the United States threatened to turn the football world upside down.

The Americans, who are rarely taken seriously in the international scene, had five-time World Cup champion Brazil in trouble.

They were up 2-0 in the Confederations Cup finals.

A nifty touch off a cross had the US up, 1-0, in just 10 minutes while a counter attack by Landon Donovan—ignored in the Spanish Liga where Brazil’s best play—had the US ahead by two.

This, from the same team the Brazilians buried, 3-0, in the elimination round. The same team that was last in its group going into the final elimination round matches.

Then the second half happened.

The Brazilians showed why they are the best in the world and piled three goals in the second half—four if you count the one the referee didn’t see—to set things in order again.

Despite the loss, the US gained a lot in the Confed Cup, showing they can be at par with the world’s best players, and even beat them, in the case of their win over Spain.

NOT FPJ. Fernando “Poe” Lumacad may have taken up a moniker based on the country’s most celebrated action hero but, based on the figurative and literal bashing the
Pinoy fighter has received, he didn’t show any of FPJ’s on-screen toughness.

Lumacad lost to Jorge Arce Jr. in three rounds and he may have lost far more than just a chance to make it big time in boxing.

Bob Arum and his trainer called him a quitter. And in boxing, that’s a damning sentence.

Michael Marley, the celebrated boxing journalist who sometimes uses his acerbic tongue, quoted Arum, “I’m no fighter. But it looked to me like the Filpino kid just quit. That is so unusual for a Filipino fighter.”

The trainer also told Marley, “Fernando told us he heard the referee count to seven…We asked him through an interpreter why he did not get up then and resume fighting. Fernando just turned his head away. I agree with Arum because he is right. The kid did quit.”

I’m no expert, but the question for me is why the hell did Lumacad’s manager book him a fight against Arce in the first place?

Going into the Lumacad fight, Arce was 51-39-5 with 40 KOs. Lumacad only turned pro in 2006 and was 19-1 going into last Sunday’s fight.

Eleven of his wins were against guys who had more losses than victories, and it was his first time to fight abroad.

One writer said for those who are used to see Manny Pacquiao, or the other fight-till-everything-drops-Pinoys, Lumacad was a “paradigm shift.”

Yep, he could be right.

But you know what could also be a nice shift? Going after unscrupulous managers who lead their fighters to a massacre.

I wonder if Lumacad’s manager is the same guy who’s sending Pinoy fighters to get butchered in Australia.

SO DARLING. You have to hand it to Robin Soderling.

Watching him at the end of the match against a guy named Roger Federer, you wouldn’t know he just lost his 11th straight match to the Swiss.

He was all smiles.

Number 11 came after loss No. 10 in the French Open finals, when Soderling said he was looking forward to Wimbledon because, “After all, no guy can beat me 11 straight times.”

In an AP report, Soderling was asked after No. 11, since he couldn’t beat Roger in tennis, can he beat him in anything else?

“I think I will beat him in marathon easy,” he said. “I’m pretty good at marathon. I’m a strong guy. I think I’m stronger than him.”

Typical Roger, of course, wouldn’t just roll over and lose.

“I’ll stay behind him and pass him at the end.”