HEROES WALL OF FAME TO WELCOME 54 ATHLETES, SPORTS LEADERS IN LAST PUSH

Some 54 athletes and sports leaders will be featured in the “Last Push” for the Heroes Wall of Fame mural project which may start sooner than expected, the eponymous Publications and Media Works announced this week.

The 54 sketches are expected to grace the remaining 24 walls at the Baguio athletic bowl grandstand walls of which 20 are martial artists, e-Pub announced this week and with help from the Sin Agi Group of Artists led by councilor artist Leandro Yangot, Jr. Yangot becomes the friendly neighbor to the e-Pub led undertaking to have 100 athletes and sports leaders at the wall in the aim to mix sports and arts and have the sports complex as an art center within Baguio, the country’s first creative city in the country.

Yangot recently opened an art bank at the former city tourism office under the bleachers of the grandstand. Artists Harold Banario, Gladys Labsan and Ged Alangui are expected to come back to complete the mural project where they earlier painted 46 athletes, some of them Olympians. “I am in,“ cried mixed martial artist Harold Banario earlier as he continues his works on martial artists athletes. Banario is most like to paint most of the 20 martial artists, most of them his team mates in Team Lakay, lined up for the final push of the recent iteration of the e-Pub concept.

Gina Iniong –Araos and the petite Islay Erika Bomogao, the recently crowned queen of the muay Thai world, banner the martial artists-athletes as they will be both joined by their comrade in arms including ONE Championships’ The Graceful, Jenelyn Olsim, and Southeast Asian Games gold medalist Claudine Veloso. “I am very excited,” said the Davao del Sur born Veloso, who chose to study at the University of Baguio where Olsim and Bomogao are also finishing their respective degrees. “Baguio has been so nice to me,” said the teary eyed Veloso, who trains at the Landslide Gym in Kilometer 4, La Trinidad, Benguet.

“I am really honored,” added the 23-year older, wiping the tears from her eyes, as Olsim said that the Davao lass is easily moved to tears. They are actually hoping that Banario will do their murals, just like what he did with Rhea May Rifani and Jan Claude Saclag, wherein they will be lumped in one wall as the last phase of the mural project may now have more than two subjects on each wall, organizers say.