THE Philippines suffered painful, harrowing defeats after cue artist Carlo Biado and duathletes Kim Mangrobang and Fer Casares fell by the wayside against the strong foreign challenge in The World Games in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday.
Mr. Biado absorbed an 11-8 defeat to German Joshua Filler in the semifinals and then succumbed to Singaporean Aloysius Yapp in the battle for the bronze medal via the same score and wound up fourth.
The world pool champion failed in his bid to duplicate his fantastic golden effort in the last edition in Wrocław, Poland five years ago.
The pair of defeats came at the hands of Mr. Filler, a repeat of his win over Mr. Biado in the finals of the 2018 World Pool Championship in Doha, Qatar, and Mr. Yapp, who avenged his defeat to the Filipino in the finals of the US Open last year.
The loss to Mr. Filler hurt the most though as Mr. Biado was on the verge of seizing the lead and gaining momentum late in their semis showdown before a disastrous miscue cost him a chance for another mint.
With the duel tied at six racks apiece in their race-to-11 match, Mr. Biado connected on a 2-9 combination but saw the cue ball caroming back to the 2-ball that resulted to a scratch.
It proved catastrophic for Mr. Biado as Mr. Filler took advantage of it to snare five of the last seven racks.
That broke the back of Mr. Biado, who just couldn’t get his confidence back and fell to Mr. Yapp.
It was worse in duathlon as Mr. Casares finished 14th in the men’s division in an hour, 53 minutes and 57 seconds while Ms. Mangrobang was one of the 12 participants in the women’s side who were disqualified due to confusion caused by what national coach Ani de Leon-Brown described as a poorly officiated race.
The country was one of the many who filed a protest.
Meanwhile, Mr. Casares and Ms. Mangrobang will spearhead the squad in the mixed relay event on Monday.
The setbacks kept the country’s haul to a gold courtesy of karateka Junna Tsukii. — Joey Villar