Sports

Beech, 92

FORMER Olympian and two-time Asian Games bronze medalist Enrique Beech, a Philippine Sports Commission consultant, died in his sleep at his residence in Paranaque early yesterday. He was 92.

“He (Beech) told his wife the previous night that he would be going to the PSC office, but when she tried to wake him up, he was already cold and stiff,” said Roger Dullano, the executive assistant of PSC Commissioner Buddy Andrada, who worked with Beech in past projects.

“Although Benchito (Beech’s nickname) was old, it still a great loss because he remained an asset to the PSC,” said PSC chairman Richie Garcia. “He was actively helping us in football when he died.”

An alumnus of San Beda and Letran, Beech’s first played football and was a member of the national team several times until he was sidelined with a knee injury in 1950, his last year with the Philippine squad.

He made a successful switch to shooting, garnering bronze medals in the 1954 Manila and 1958 Asian Games and also saw action in his first and only Olympics in the 1960 Rome Olympiad.

In his twilight years, Beech became an avid golfer and was enshrined in the San Beda Sports Hall of fame in 2003.

He became an intermittent consultant of the PSC starting in 1990 under the late inaugural PSC chairman Jose Mari Hechanova.

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