INQUIRER Sports

YOUTHFUL sports godfather Mikee Romero has taken many great win-win shots, but that stoic hesitation he maintained after he was offered a vital post in the national sports hierarchy takes the cake.

It?s Romero?s most significant move to date.

It was a heroic fade-away that should henceforth isolate him from the gangster grip of beastly exploiters.

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For starters, it did not sound wholly mad like selling the Jones Bridge to a friend when Go Teng Kok offered Romero the presidency of the Integrated Cycling Federation of the Philippines (PhilCycling).

But Romero obviously smelled something fishy.

He agreed, but only to sit down and talk.

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In the first place, this was no longer the old GTK, once also known as Go Teng Crook, he would be dealing with.

This was no longer the family black sheep who was stalled at the airport after he was presented two pages detailing assorted charges before he could leave for Beijing as manager of the RP basketball team to the 1990 Asian Games.

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?Am nu longil bad boy, boss,? Go stammered over the phone after I extended condolences on his mother?s death a few years back.

In that same phone talk, Go went on to confide how he had fervently vowed to his dying mother that he would change his ways and reform fully.

GTK did just that. He shone on the sporting front with an effective, no-nonsense handling of the Philippine Amateur Track and Field Association, which he heads.

He gained respect both here and the Asian fields, and at times acted as envoy for Peping Cojuangco, president of the Philippine Olympic Committee, whom he serves as chief assistant.

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It was a mild, very mature gentleman who would answer whenever you rang GTK?s number.

Go would also often sound low, prayerful like a saint.

Then suddenly, last week, it was no longer that nice guy, but a bothered man who shrieked at the end of the line.

Go, all-powerful, could no longer honestly explain how he nullified the official results of the May 9 election wherein former national cyclist Rolando Hiso had won over Romero as PhilCycling.

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That exercise, by the way, was supervised by a POC team headed by Go himself.

Anyway, a full week before the saintly Mr. Go turned beastly, Romero, newly returned from the United States, told me that he was not inclined to accept the cycling presidency being offered to him.

Romero added that he honestly believed Hiso would be in a best position to serve, having been duly elected as PhilCycling president.

* * *

The best Romero could do was come to a meeting at the Kamayan on Edsa on Thursday.

This was Romero?s text prior to that meeting:

?I asked for the national team in cycling to meet me. I want to get a pulse on the riders. I?m not inclined to accept the presidency although POC is pressing me to do so.?

True enough, Romero refused to bite.

He instead donated P5 million to PhilCycling and offered hefty cash incentives for medalists in this year?s Southeast Asian Games in Laos.

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The story will not be complete without noting that Romero apparently did not recognize the result of a bogus vote wherein, through sordid installment, they added two more presidential votes for him during a May 17 board meeting.

A hard-nosed gentleman, Romero must?ve found the unscheduled exercise fraudulent.

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Now, this is not to say that Romero had successfully refused a pact with the devil.

It?s not also fair to say that Go?s reformed behavior was all a result of a ?sudden attack of humility.?

Go just needs to manifest honest intentions again.

You know, to dispel this forgotten suspicion that, based on his old rotten ways, Go Teng Kok?s mother must?ve lusted on a grim, godless fruit when he was still a speck in her blessed womb.

May she rest in peace.

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(HOLY REUNION: Relatives of Mother Laura Mendoza, founder of the Missionary Catechists of the Sacred Heart, and other members of the Latorre and Mendoza families, are invited to the blessing of the Madre Laura Centrum on C.M Recto at 3:00 p.m., Wednesday, July 1. There will be a showing of a film on the life of Madre Laura, a revered Lipa native, and distribution of comics supplements tracing the growth of MCSH into diocesan congregation.)