There was that intense, nervous look on Ernest John Obiena’s face moments before his takeoff at the 2021 Golden Roof Challenge in Austria on September 12. He set out to clear the longstanding Asian record of 5.92m made by Kazakhstan’s Igor Potapovich in 1992. He started sprinting, planted his pole on the box, jumped, swung in the air, and landed strongly on the mat. He cleared 5.93 meters, in effect resetting the Asian record. After his feat, EJ jubilantly fell on his knees, let out a scream, and thanked the ecstatic Innsbruck crowd for cheering him on.
To EJ, the feat was more than just beating a record. “That was very important for me. [But] I think it’s more of a personal kind of thing,” EJ admits to ANCX in an interview. “I was trying to prove a point to myself that I’m really capable of doing what I set out to do. Because I felt like I fell short of my Olympic debut.” He finished 11th in Tokyo.
“I wasn’t able to perform the way I wanted to in Tokyo, and that took a big hit on my confidence,” he says with a serious look on his face. “It’s knowing deep inside that as an athlete, it doesn’t matter how good you can jump, it matters when you can jump it on the day that you need to. That’s sports. You need to bring the best game of your career on the biggest stage. To me, [my performance in Austria] was more than just a record that I have in my career. Kumbaga, kailangan kong mapaniwala ulit ang sarili ko na kaya ko.”
The guy has fully devoted himself to training and competing in the last season. So at the moment, the 25-year-old pole vaulter says he’s taking a short break from the competitive mindset. “I’ve been driving around Italy just to unwind, spending some time with my girlfriend, trying to live a bit of a normal life, enjoy it in a way,” he says, smiling.
“I need a couple of weeks to get my mental game to where it should be. I need to be hungry again to train,” he adds. “At the same time, I cannot lose a lot of time. I cannot just slack off. I need to do my general preparation, build my foundation so that I’d be healthy enough to compete in the long season ahead.”
The closest competition he’d be preparing for would be the indoor season that will start early next year. The 2022 World Athletics Indoor Championships is scheduled on March in Belgrade, but dates have yet to be confirmed depending on the Covid situation.
All in the family
EJ’s father was a pole vaulter himself while his mom was a hurdler, so it’s no surprise that becoming an athlete was the natural track for the Obiena children to take. Emerson Obiena had a decade-long career in pole vaulting and won two silvers and two bronzes at the Southeast Asian Games. He also ranked sixth in the Asian meet. Mrs. Jeanette Obiena, on the other hand, was a collegiate level athlete.
Since EJ’s mother was helping her husband train and had no one to leave four-year-old EJ to, they’d bring him the boy to the track as well. “I’d see my dad fling himself 15 to 16 feet off the ground. As a kid, that’s amazing, so you want to try what your dad is doing,” he says.
His dad showed the sport to him and the younger Obiena also ended up loving the exhilarating feeling of flying and free fall. “Time moved quite fast. One thing to led to another and next thing I know, I’m a pole vaulter being offered scholarships by top-tier universities.” Before joining the national team, EJ was representing his alma mater, the University of Santo Tomas.
EJ’s younger sister, Emily, later on followed EJ’s footsteps. She represented UST for a time in the UAAP pole vaulting competitions and won multiple medals. But unlike EJ, she did not pursue athletics right after college and opted to venture in another career.
The injury
While pole vaulting made EJ happy because of the accolades and the opportunities it provided him, it was not as integral to his life until his injury in 2017. He sustained an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury a day before leaving for the 2017 SEA Games. This left him with no choice but to take a break from the sport for six months. It also left him with a decision to make—to continue his track as a national athlete after his recovery, or simply finish his degree and walk away from the sport.
At that time, he’d already set a national record and earned multiple medals. Some would have said those were good enough. But a lot of introspection happened over those six months. EJ knew he needed to make the decision for himself. “I was thinking, would I be happy to kinda just let this Olympic dream go? It’s not logical after tearing two ligaments on your takeoff leg to try to pursue the sport again. It’s a bit of a dumb move,” he says with a soft laugh. “But at the same time, I found this calling deep inside me—if you don’t try it, you’re going to regret it. I felt that deep inside. Every time I talk about it, I still feel a bit of an emotion. It truly took a hit.”But when he made the decision to continue the sport and truly embrace it as his own, that’s when he started to see an Olympics win as something he’d want to achieve, even die for.
What it takes
It goes without saying that it’s important to have the physical strength and agility for pole vaulting. But EJ says that a pole vaulter needs to first and foremost be mentally strong. “It’s not a sport for the faint-hearted,” he says. “You go upside down five to six meters high, fling yourself over the crossbar using a stick.”
To be able to attain his skill level, he has to devote a huge amount of time in his training. He trains twice a day, and each training takes about two to four hours. “My daily schedule is quite repetitive. I wake up in the morning, prepare my breakfast, eat, rest for 30 minutes, go to the track, start preparing for training, warm up, train. Then, I’d eat lunch at the training center, rest for an hour or two before the next training session which would start at 3PM or 4PM and finish around 8PM. I eat dinner at the training center, go back home, take a shower, sleep. I do that maybe 6 days a week, sometimes 7 depending on the schedule.”
It is challenging, yes. But now that he’s a pro in the sport (he’s currently the world #5), what he considers most difficult is being far away from home, “not being able to live a normal life,” and not seeing his family. EJ has been based in Italy for some time. The last time he saw his mom, his sister, his friends, and his dogs was during the SEA Games in 2019. It was a good thing he got to see his dad at the Tokyo Olympics.
The other challenge for EJ is very unique to the sport—traveling with the poles. “You see, the poles are five meters long and they don’t fold. They’re fragile,” he says. “It sounds petty but that was one of the biggest concerns that I had going to the Tokyo Olympics—getting my poles there. It was half the battle.”
He needed an assurance—a written confirmation, preferably—that the plane will take his poles, and take good care of them. Apparently, not all planes allow odd-sized sporting equipment in flight. “Imagine working for five years or more for the sport, and then you go to the competition without your equipment. You’d be helpless. The anxiety of that is a totally different thing,” he says. “The stress of the competition doesn’t hit me that much; I love it. But making sure that my poles get in the plane, I don’t like that kind of stress.”
When he didn’t receive any written response from the chosen airline three days before his flight to Tokyo, he had to request the assistance of the Philippine Ambassador in Italy to call the airline company. He got the confirmation from the airline only hours before his flight.
Looking forward
Chasing the dream of becoming an Olympic gold medalist entails sacrifices. In order to give his best shot in the competitions, he needs to completely focus on his training and take a leave from his studies. He has yet to finish one more year to complete his Electronics Engineering degree in UST.
“It doesn’t sound like a sacrifice [to take a break from school] but from a logical standpoint, I don’t believe pole vaulting is a job. I don’t think this is going to make me a living. I know that I need to go back to the university and study,” he says. “I do get jealous about my friends. They’re graduates now, they’re working. They’re set for life. The older they get, the higher they get paid. In sports, the older you get, the lesser you get supported.”
The future engineer says he’s very interested in his course and is looking forward to the next chapter of his life, the one that will come after his pole vaulting career. But for now, EJ’s eyes are on the prize.
It’s a big, daunting task to fully commit the next three years of his life to achieving his Olympic dreams. “Every time I step on the track, I try to win. I love being an Olympian. But I don’t go there just to take part. I was there in Tokyo to win a medal,” he says, “and I’m going to the Summer Olympics in Paris with the same intention, same goal.”