FOR UST Trackster Ernest John Obiena, what was once an impossible dream is now within reach.
Obiena is looking to qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the pole vault event and join Eric Cray as the only Filipinos with a sure ticket to the Games.
The 19-year-old trackster aims to reach the Olympic minimum clearance of 5.70 meters as he has now cleared 5.45 meters. He is 25 centimeters away from a trip to Rio.
“Target ko po bilang athlete, ay maging world-class, which equates to being an Olympian,” said Obiena, who has had his eyes on the Olympic stage since he started training at eight years old.
Obiena, who holds the South East Asian (SEA) standard in pole vaulting, rewrote the record books four times this year. The first time was last May at the Taiwan Open where he cleared 5.25 meters, barely surpassing the six-year record held by Thai Kreetha Sintacheewa at 5.24 meters.
The following week, Obiena broke his own record with a 5.30-meter finish at the Busan International Pole Vault Open in South Korea.
However, in the SEA Games in Singapore last June, he lost in heartbreaking fashion to Thailand’s Pooranut Purahong and settled for silver after failing to clear the 5.30-meter mark.
Unfazed by the loss, the trackster went to Italy and continued his training in the prestigious International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) High Performance Center in Formia under Vitaly Petrov, coach of six-time IAAF World Pole Vault Champion Sergey Bubka.
“Inisip ko na lang sa next competition, ‘yung sure win na talaga. ‘Yung malayong-malayo na talaga [ang difference]. Kahit may konting miscalculations, hindi ako matatalo,” Obiena told the Varsitarian.
When his traning session in Italy ended, Obiena and Purahong met again in the finals of the Thailand Open last September. This time, the Filipino came on top and set another record with a 5.40 meter-clearance for the gold medal.
Inching closer to his dream, last Sept. 27, he cleared the 5.40-meter mark in his first attempt in the Philippine Athletic Track and Field Association weekly relays held at the PhilSports complex in Pasig.
Runs in the family
Obiena’s emergence can be traced back in his roots as he came from a family of track-and-field athletes.
His father, UST Trackster assistant coach Emerson, pole vaulter for the national team in the 1980’s, and his mother, Jeanette, a college hurdler, opened his eyes to the world of athletics.
“Hindi sila nag-push, pero sila nag-open ng opportunity sa akin. Without the help and support of my parents, wala ako.”
On the other hand, his sister Emily is also a pole vaulter and holds the national record for women at 3.30 meters. Obiena admits there is more pressure for him in competing since he came from a family of athletes.
In addition to fulfilling his personal goals, the lanky six-foot-two leaper says that he is doing it for his father who earlier promised his coach, the late Bill Villanueva, that he would produce a homegrown Filipino that could clear beyond the five-meter mark.
At the time, Filipino-American Edward Lasquete held the record at 5.0 meters set in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
When the third year Electrical Engineering student finally passed Lasquete’s record by a whisker at 5.01 meters in July 2014, Villanueva was not able to see his prodigy’s promise for he had passed away.
Obiena is thankful since everything came into place for him to exceed everyone’s expectations, which he had never thought as a small and sluggish child.
“Sa ngayon, napakasaya ko kasi maraming tao ang naniniwala na maabot ko ang Olympic standard, which was impossible a few months ago. Gusto kong ipakita na kaya ng Filipino na makapag-hit ng qualifier sa Olympics, which is very rare,” he said.
