Spending extra hours during the holidays to train and prepare for the indoor season in Europe worked wonders for Tokyo Olympic-bound Ernest John Obiena.
Away from the Philippines for around 15 months, Obiena said the sacrifices he and his coach Vitaly Petrov made were worth it.
Doing his routines on Christmas eve and the day before New Year, gave Obiena the needed time to improve on his ability of clearing higher heights.
“I have never been a good athlete in indoor meets. But my coach pulled all the strings he made,” said Obiena in an online huddle on Zoom during the weekly program, “Power & Play.”
The time spent training away from the Philippines has given the 25-year-old Obiena a chance to become the best version of himself.
“It worked and credit goes to him (Petrov),” added Obiena.
The 83-year-old Petrov, who has coached pole vaulting greats and world champions like Sergey Bubka, Yelena Isinbayeva and Giuseppe Gibilisco, showed a lot of passion in helping him improve his craft.
“So I look back at it in a way that it has given me time to be stronger, faster and be a better athlete by the time the Olympics come. And I think that the best perspective for me is to focus,” said Obiena.
The pole vaulter said he has never gone this far in indoor competitions, more than two weeks after almost breaking the national record again.
Last Feb. 17 in the men’s pole vault event of the Copernicus Cup 2021 indoor athletics meet in Torun Poland, Obiena tried to reach the height of 5.87 meters, which was one millimeter higher than his gold medal-winning effort of 5.86.
Obiena eventually settled for the bronze medal in another showdown with world champion Sam Kendricks of the United States and seasoned veteran Piotr Lisek of Poland.
“As for 2020, it was impossible. I really wanted to be in the Olympics, and I needed to do the sacrifices that I needed to do,” added Obiena.
While in Torun, Obiena cleared the same height of 5.80 meters with Kendricks and Lisek, making a clean attempt on his third try and this put him in third place.
Kendricks, the 2016 Olympic bronze medallist, collected the gold medal after clearing the elevation in one try, while Lisek, who had podium finishes in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 World Championships, also cleared 5.8 meters to settle for the silver.
Obiena said being in Europe for a long period of time has made him think of coming back to the Philippines and be with his family.
But that will have to wait for now, since travel restrictions imposed by many countries during the ongoing coronavirus has made his plans to go home difficult.
Obiena, who won his second podium finish in a week since the Torun meet, will now get ready for the outdoor meets in Europe, which start within the next two months.
He is now back in Formia, Italy, where Obiena trains under Petrov and with Rio Olympics gold medallist Thiago Braz, who is from Brazil.
In the initial days of the lockdown in Italy, Obiena said he was not able to leave his place of residence for around 45 days.
That was the time when he needed to do his workouts in the home of Braz, who gladly welcomed him in.
“Good thing my friend Thiago has a big house. So I was training in his backyard. So we’re not doing anything that would violate the restrictions that was set by the Italian government,” recalled Obiena.
Obiena is now using a new pole when he broke the national record for the second time in Torun, since clearing a height of 5.86 meters to earn the silver medal during the Orlen Cup 2021 Indoor Athletics meeting.
That performance was regarded as the best that was done by an Asian athlete in the trackfest’s 88-year history when action ended at the Atlas Arena in Åódź, Poland.
