The Philippine Olympic Committee clarified that the apparel problems faced by the golf team at Paris 2024 were due to logistics issues.
The Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) has spoken up to address the recent controversy regarding the apparel for golfers, or lack thereof, during the Olympic Games Paris 2024--explaining the issue with logistics.
The issue surfaced on Friday night with a viral video from golfer Dottie Ardina, as she prepared for Round 3 of the tournament along with Bianca Pagdanganan.
Ardina, wearing matching bright green tops with Pagdanganan, was seen affixing the Philippine flag on her top with double-sided tape.
"Doblehin natin tape, baka mamaya matuklap 'to, mahirap na," she said. "Sana all may uniform, kami lang wala. Kailangan pang bumili ng t-shirt."
Ardina and Pagdanganan are the last two Philippine athletes competing in Paris 2024.
"Shoutout naman dyan sa mga walang nagbigay, asan na ba uniform namin?" Ardina added. "Kami lang walang uniform, tuklap-tuklap pa."
In a statement released Saturday, the POC explained that there was a set of competition uniform from Adidas designed for the golfers before the Olympics began.
"We told them that golf is different. They understood and sent us a visual deck of the proposed uniforms. We informed them of the logo rules as well," the statement attributed to POC president Bambol Tolentino read.
These would apparently be shipped to Paris by July 31, but some items such as tracksuits were delivered to Pagdanganan's family in Manila before their flight.
A shipment arrived in the Athletes' Village on August 3, containing tracksuits, t-shirts, and caps, but no competition gear such as playing tops, bottoms, and shoes.
"I immediately called Adidas to inform them. They said it should be there, but I again said they weren't," Tolentino said. "So they traced the items and found that there were still items stuck with DHL."
"So they decided to purchase the clothing locally in Paris, based on the sizes submitted by the players previously," the POC statement added regarding the conversation with Adidas. However, the Philippine flag was still required on the apparel.
"So they made the effort to get them printed. They found a place but didn't have the capability of printing flags. So they did the second option, which was to print our Olympic country code," the POC statement read.
Unfortunately, when the clothes were delivered to the golfers, only one fit Ardina.
"At that point, Dottie had decided to go out and buy tops for both of them," Tolentino said.
As of this writing, Pagdanganan is tied for joint fourth in Round 4, while Ardina continued to improve and jump 12 places up for joint 11th.