Petecio siblings help the PHL snare four golds, five silvers and one bronze

PNHOM PENH — As she was prepping her pre-finals routines, Pinay boxing ace Nesthy Petecio took time to give her kid brother Norlan, fresh from his losing bout, a consoling hug.

Norlan (Petecio) fell short of his bid to score a Cinderella feat in the 32nd Southeast Asian Games (SEAG), yielding a unanimous decision to Thai champ Bunjong Sinsiri.

The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist made Norlan’s loss extra motivation when she took her turn to vie for the gold in the women’s 57kg class. Punching for Norlan, Ate Nesthy (Petecio) thoroughly defeated her rival, Ratna Devi of Indonesia, 5-0, to cop her second SEAG title in six appearances.

The Petecio siblings helped the Philippines snare four golds, five silvers and one bronze to rank second overall behind Thailand (9-2-1) in men’s and women’s boxing.

The output was an improvement from the 3-2-2 collection last time in Vietnam for the Pinoy pugilists, who were further driven to perform here in memory of their departed father figure, former boxing chief Ed Picson.

Karina Picson, widow of the former broadcaster, was with the boxers in the journey in the “Kingdom of Wonder.”

“I’m very, very happy with our boxers’ performance. We expected this. We knew they will do good here,” she said as she reflected on the performance of the boxers led by gold winners Nesthy, Carlo Paalam, Paul Bascon and Ian Clark Bautista. — Olmin Leyba