At one point, it seemed EJ Obiena’s Olympic medal dream was going down the drain. But he is now through to the pole vault finals, thanks to his coach.
EJ Obiena went bananas upon clearing 5.70m in the qualifications of the men’s pole vault at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on Saturday, August 3 (Philippine time).
The world no. 2 pole vaulter shouted at the top of his lungs after recovering from the jump as though he already won the gold medal.
But at that point, Obiena had no other recourse but to let it all out.
After all, the Filipino superstar athlete uncharacteristically missed his first two attempts at 5.60m.
It was a strange occurrence. His personal best was 6.00. So 5.60m should have been a breeze. But here he was, one failed vault away from kissing his Olympic medal dreams goodbye.
It was his coach who made the call to go up to 5.70 meters for Obiena's third and what could have been his final attempt.
“‘We missed two attempts at 60 and you wanna go at 70? And I haven’t made a bar. Are you sure?’” Obiena recalled his conversation with his mentor.
“And he said. ‘Yeah, move up a pole.”
"Internally I was like, 'why are you so calm? I'm very stressed out and you're so calm," Obiena recounted. "My dream was on the line in one jump."
"Sorry for the language, my s*** went up, turned around, and went down," he said, laughing.
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The coach's trust helped calm Obiena’s nerves.
"Trust your coach, 'coz he made the call," he recounted.
He went on and cleared 5.70m and then 5.75m with ease. It was enough to reach the final 12.
Obiena's yell after the successful jump was palpable.
“That helped. I just did what he told me and executed. And after that we’re pretty chill. We didn’t really need to jump [5.75] but it got me into the rhythm,” he said.
“After that [5.70], I didn’t wanna express so much emotion. But dude, three years of things I’ve gone through and everything was on the line.”
Obiena's longtime personal coach is Ukraine's Vitaly Petrov.
Rohsaan Griffin of the USA is also listed in Obiena's Olympics page as national coach.
Now the Asian gold medalist made the finals after placing seventh and actually had a shot to make up for an 11th place finish in Tokyo years ago.
“I’m just gonna do my thing, make the right things day in and day out. I trust my coach with my life. We’ll see what he plans,” he said.
He will take center stage again in the finals on August 6 at 1 a.m. (Philippine time).
(With reports from Boom Gonzalez/Cignal TV, One Sports)