THE country's main roads and highways will be without its usual fare of colorfully-clad cyclists riding for glory and fame this summer.

This after Tour godfather Bert Lina, unwittingly dragged into a highly-publicized controversy, decided to cancel this year's edition of the Tour called in recent years as Padyak Pinoy.

"Until all these have been settled and cleared would I be considering bringing the Padyak Pinoy back on the road," said Lina, who is president of the national association for the sport, PhilCycling.

"For the meantime, there will be no Tour or Padyak Pinoy."

This summer's Padyak Pinoy was scheduled for eight stages from May 1 to 8 and will culminate with the Baguio-Baguio stage. Gary Cayton, president of the Dynamic Outcourse Solutions Inc. or Dos-1 under the Lina Group of Companies that has organized the Tour since 2005, also planned the inclusion of foreign teams to this summer's race and actually received confirmation from seven countries.

The foreign teams will be invited again to next year's summer race should the Padyak Pinoy be revived.

That is when the controversy, stemming from alleged anomalous acquisition and distribution of equipment and gear which the national cycling team used in the 2007 Thailand Southeast Asian Games, is resolved.

Lina is the owner of Air21, the principal sponsor of the Tour, which revived it in 2002 until Tanduay joined in as major backer in 2005. Under Lina's efforts, the Tour approximated the Tour's grandeur when it was sponsored by Philip Morris Phils. through Marlboro. Philip Morris stopped sponsoring the Tour after 22 years in 1998 because of restrictions in tobacco advertising, but four years later, Lina saw the need to bring the fabled race back on the road and tested the waters with the four-day FedEx Tour of Calabarzon.

In 2003, the Tour went 15 stages all over Luzon from Bicol. The next year, an 18-stage Tour was held and from 2005 until 2007, the Tour became eight- or 10-stage editions to conform to Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) format for multi-stage road races.

About a dozen cyclists, most of them members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, sought the ouster of their head coach Jomel Lorenzo. But Lorenzo was retained by PhilCycling because of his performance and pending the resolution of the case by an appropriate body.

The protesting cyclists then filed a case with the Ombudsman primarily against Lorenzo. But in their effort to drumbeat their intention, they included in their complaint officials of the Philippine Sports Commission and hand-picked members of the PhilCycling board, including Lina, all of whom preferred to keep Lorenzo as head coach.

These cyclists are Baby Marites Bitbit (Army), Alfie Catalan (Army), Eusebio Quinones (Navy), Carlo Jasul (Army), Nilo Estayo (Air Force), Paulo Manapul (Army), Emelito Atilano (Air Force), Arnold Marcelo (Army), Alvin Benosa (Army) and Warren Davadilla (Air Force) and Frederick Feliciano and March Mcquin Aleonar. Mechanic Edwin Niyo (Army) joined the group.

Lorenzo could be partly credited for the improvement of Philippine cycling in the SEA Games. From the one gold medal won in 2003, Lorenzo helped clinch two golds in Manila in 2005 and doubled these to four golds in the 2007 Thailand edition, making the sport the second most productive after swimming. After the 2007 SEA Games, Lorenzo's wards topped the tough Tour of Thailand that featured some of the world's cycling powers.