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The Philippine pole vault EJ Obiena surpassed 5.80 meters, the best mark of the season, en route to another final goal, this time at the Diamond League match in Rome on Friday morning.
Obiena was just one centimeter away from matching the best of his career, which he set last year and which allowed him to become the first Filipino athlete to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.
The 24-year-old won a bronze medal for his efforts, finishing behind world record holder Armand “Mondo” Duplantis of Sweden and Ben Broeders of Belgium.
Duplantis, a 20-year-old prodigy who broke the 6.14m set of pole vault legend Sergey Bubka earlier this year in July 1994, surpassed 6.15m on his second attempt. Duplantis had surpassed 6.18m in a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, to set the new record
PATAFA President Philip Ella Juico is very satisfied with the results that Obiena had been counting on for the past few weeks.
“Clearly, EJ continues to fight the best in the world. The field at the Diamond League in Rome included Swedish-American Armand Duplantis, world record holder, Belgian Ben Broefers, European champion and Renaud Levillanie of France. The field cannot be harder than that, “explained the athletic chief.
“Rome showed that the jump for the gold medal in Tokyo will be between 5.8m and 6.0. EJ’s calibrated performance and training regimen show no signs of an early peak. Our bet is to train hard and smart with coach Vitaly Petrov, “he added.
Obiena is just days away from a stellar gold medal performance in the Czech Republic, beating former Olympic gold medalists Thiago Braz and Levillanie.
