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Filipino Olympic rower causes a ripple after volleyball switch
MANILA, Aug 16 (AFP) - A former Filipino junior volleyball ace is dreaming of making waves at the Sydney Olympics after switching sports to take up rowing. Benjamin Tolentino, 27, a former spiker in the national junior volleyball squad, turned his back on the sport four years ago -- and has taken to rowing like a duck to water. "It just happened," said the six-foot tall Tolentino of his decision to change to rowing after relatively little success in volleyball. He credits his uncle, legendary Filipino basketball great Mariano Tolentino, who competed in the Olympics in the 1950s, for encouraging him to make the sport switch. But unlike his famous uncle, who competed in a team sport, the younger Tolentino will vie in the single sculls in rowing, considered one of the toughest individual disciplines. Benjie Ramos, president of the Philippine Rowing Association, said: "I think he was encouraged to join because he saw that our rowers at that time were winning a lot of medals." Tolentino's first taste of international victory was as a member of the four-man team that won the Hong Kong rowing championships in 1996, a feat he matched a year later in the coxless fours at the Merlion competitions in Singapore. At the 1997 Jakarta Southeast Asian Games, the rower captured silver medals in the coxless fours and the eight-man squad to cap a fruitful season. But the highpoint of Tolentino's rowing career came at the Asian rowing championships in Nagamuna, Japan, when he managed a creditable fourth-place finish to clinch his ticket to Sydney. While Tolentino is not a realistic medal contender at next month's games, he is now hard in training at an idyllic isolated reservoir on the northern outskirts of Manila. He is now set his sights on a personal best performance. Under the watchful eye of Lithuanian coach Rolandas Kazlaukas Tolentino is being put through a gruelling regime at the La Mesa Dam camp, and even mobile phones have been banned. Tolentino be only the second Filipino rower to compete in the Olympics after Ed Maerina, now a coach, who also took part in the single sculls in the 1988 Seoul Games. The athlete, who recently married, said he plans to join the Army once his Olympic stint is over. "That, and start my own family," he said.
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