GTK: Outspoken and controversial

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THE local sports community yesterday mourned the passing of former Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association president Go Teng Kok, considered one of the most outspoken and controversial figures to grace local sports, who died recently due to a lingering illness. He was 80.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the recent demise of our former President of (the) Philippine Athletics or Patafa (1991-2014), Mr Go Teng Kok,” Patafa president Terry Capistrano said in a statement yesterday.

“Mr. Go Teng Kok, our Chairman Emeritus, served with great dedication, fervor and devotion to track and field and the well-being of its athletes and officials first and foremost,” Capistrano said. “We will miss this great man who was impactful in the sports of athletics. May he rest in peace.”

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Known as the “Man in White” for his all-white attire and by his initials “GTK” to his close associates and friends, Go passed away last Dec. 18 while hospitalized at the National Kidney Institute in Quezon City for an unknown illness, according to a longtime Patafa staff.

“His (Go’s) family wanted to keep his death private and wanted to make the announcement of his passing away until they were ready through Patafa,” the source said.

“He was like a father to all of us – staff, athletes and coaches. We will miss him dearly,” added the source of the man who headed the local track body that was formerly known as the Philippine Amateur Track and Field Association.

“In all my association with him, Mr. Go was always well-meaning but often misunderstood. We got along well with him. He was a good friend and ally,” noted former POC first vice president and volleyball head Joey Romasanta.

“The issues that he was involved in were never about athletes but more those related with, ironically, other sports,” Romasanta recalled.

Go was born on July 30, 1944 to a wealthy family in Cebu that owned the company Goyu and Sons, the first exclusive distributor of the Ford Taunus car in the country in the sixties.

He was the team manager of the national men’s basketball squad coached by cage legend Robert “The Big J” Jaworski which won the silver medal after losing to host China 76-90 in the finals of the 1990 Beijing Asian Games.

Go became president of the local track body in 1991 as the successor of the late POC president Gov. Jose Sering, who had taken the businessman under his wings, often staying at the Patafa office just beside the historic Rizal Memorial Football Stadium.

Mentored by Sering, Go was a quick study and learned the ins and outs of the Olympic sport, developing track and athletes who would excel on the regional stage, among them middle-distance runner and two-time Southeast Asian Games gold medalist Eduardo Buenavista.

Also flourishing during his watch was Elma Muros-Posadas, who won 11 Southeast Asian Games gold medals from 1991 to 2001, highlighted by a golden treble in sweeping the women’s 100 and 200-meter runs and long jump event.

The late People’s Journal sports editor Joe Antonio first dubbed the national track and field team as “GTK’s Army” when the Pinoy campaigners romped off with eight gold, three silver and five silver medals to finish third overall in the discipline in the 2003 Vietnam SEA Games.

They followed it up with a 9-11-9 haul, good for second overall, two years later during the country’s third hosting of the regional games, and continued to deliver consistently with a 6-4-3 tally at the 2013 Myanmar SEA Game, a year before Go stepped down as Patafa chief.

He was succeeded in July 2014 by former Philippine Sports Commission chairman Philip Ella Juico, who headed the renamed Patafa (Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association) until 2021.

Go’s influence went beyond his turf, joining forces with the late fencing chief Cito Dayrit and the majority of the National Sports Association leaders in the ouster of POC president Cristy Jalasco in 1999 under the threat of a possible suspension from the International Olympic Committee.

As a special assistant to former POC president Jose “Peping” Cojuangco, Go was also in the thick of things involving the basketball intramurals between the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas and the defunct Basketball Association of the Philippines in the early 2000s.

After much wrangling and horse-trading, the SBP, led by businessman-sportsman Manny V. Pangilinan, was recognized in 2007 by the International Basketball Federation.

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