Friday, February 01, 2008 Petition reveals ‘scam’ By Marian C. Baring Sun.Star Staff Reporter
THE petiton of the national team members of Philcyling has opened a can of worms in the sport—equipment intended for athletes’ use being sold to stores.
After years of complaining for lack of support from the Philippine Sports Commission, the sports governing body of the country, the members of the RP team learned in a bitter way that the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) had thrown their full support and the team were just blindsided by the people that they trusted—their coach.
Yesterday, a former mechanic for the RP team, Edwin Niyo, told Sun.Star Cebu that he was one of those tasked by national team head coach Jomel Lorenzo in one instance to receive the spare parts that were released by the PSC before the Sea Games. He was told to deliver these parts, not to the cyclists who needs them, but to a store in Manila where these were allegedly re-sold.
“I was ordered by coach Jomel to receive the spare parts for the road cyclists. But they never reached the cyclists because after I received it at the PSC office, I delivered it to the store,” Niyo said.
Niyo said while he questioned this move, he decided to keep it to himself to avoid controversy. “Nakita ko na nagrereklamo at nagwawala na ang mga riders, that’s why I decided to support them,” he said.
Niyo added while riders were asking for spare parts before leaving for the Thailand Sea Games December of last year, a bulk of spare parts were already received Nov. 28 yet. “There were 14 pieces of tires for mountain bike received last Nov.28 and another 100 pieces received in the same month. I was tasked by coach Jomel to bring 65 of these tires to the same store,” Niyo said in Tagalog.
Petition
A group of cyclists submitted a petition letter to Phicycling and later to the PSC regarding their complaints.
When sought for comment, Lorenzo said he was restricted by Philcycling secretary general Jun Lomibao from answering questions. Lomibao, for his part, said that they can only speak for the other things in the petition but not regarding the complaint on the equipment.
“The PSC had already inventoried and audited the Philcycling two weeks ago already and besides, no equipment ever reaches Philcycling because all these, including the allowances of the athletes, go directly to them and not to the organization,” Lomibao said.
Lomibao, however, said that Lorenzo is made to sign the memorandum receipts since the PSC wanted to make it systematic and have one person per NSA receive these.
“It is very unfortunate that this had to happen. It is a big blow to the NSA because we had the best ever performance in the Sea Games with four golds, one silver and five bronzes,” he added.
Lomibao also said that half of those who authored the petition were either already dropped from the roster last August or was to be dropped last January because of poor performance.
Lomibao said they decided to disband the RP team because the cyclists resisted the parameters that they set for the hearing.
“They became hostile and disrespectful to the board that we just decided to disband the whole team and start from scratch,” he added.
PSC chairman William “Butch” Ramirez was sought for comment, but was at a press conference at press time last night.
