A chink in Nestlé’s armor

THERE is a dent in Nestlé’s image as corporate sponsor of the country’s best known marathon.

It’s all because an avid 61-year-old long distance runner, who happens to be once the country’s top Olympic official, spilled the beans.

“Let’s put this Milo thing to rest,” Michael Keon now says.

But not after he called media last week to complain that Rio de la Cruz, organizer of the Milo Marathon that is named after the Nestlé beverage, had not publicly apologized as Keon has asked for a grievous error.

Last Dec. 6, Keon and his chauffeur, former duathlete Randy Basilio, took part in the 10-kilometer run during the Milo Marathon National Finals in Angeles City in Pampanga.

Both were on cloud nine after the event, thinking they had set their own best personal records.

Keon thought he ran a personal best 45 minutes and 18 seconds. Unbelievable, he told himself. His previous best was 51:11. The 40-year-old Basilio clocked 33:9 from his earlier best of 34:24.

“When I ran the Apo Lakay 10K (held to remember his uncle Ferdinand Marcos in Laoag) last September, I clocked 55:18 so I thought the course was too long,” Keon noted.

“When I competed in the Vita Plus in 2013, where I notched my personal best of 51:11 I thought the course was too short.”

So to erase his doubts, he said he went national for the first time, to the Milo race last December, where he later found out that the 10K there was “messed up.”

Cautiously ecstatic after his race for 60 year olds and up, Keon asked for a clarification about the run’s distance and was aghast to find out it was 1.2K shorter than 10K.

That’s when he, Basilio and the rest of the 10K runners plunged back to earth after the initial glee of success.

The winning 10K time [of Richard Salano] was 20:15 while the long time Philippine record is 29:30.

De la Cruz says in a statement that the distance of the 10K race course was indeed accurate. He claimed that an investigation showed that an inadvertent turn made the run sanctioned by the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races shorter.

He has since apologized and Keon, who just returned from Australia where he spent the holidays with his family, graciously accepted.

The former Philippine Olympic Committee president and Gintong Alay director said that errors of such magnitude have no place in the “preeminent” Milo Marathon Finals.

“If Rio can get away with it, this could be a metaphor for Philippine sports, that people are not adhering to standards,” Keon told a sportswriter this week.

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The nation’s more lucrative and competitive cycling events will be held next month.

The shorter Le Tour de Filipinas starts Feb. 18 and winds through Metro Manila and Quezon Province.

Ronda Pilipinas fires off on Feb. 20 with stops in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

“Times have changed,” says cycling great Jesus Garcia Jr. “It’s now a case of one-upmanship where sponsors can’t agree to hold one first and then start the other contest later to give cyclists the opportunity to compete in both.”