EJ Obiena

Obiena met Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergey Bubka, who was visiting the Philippines in early 2014. He was only going to ask Bubka for an autograph when he learned about a chance to train in Italy. Obiena traveled to Italy for three months in the same year to train in Formia with coach Vitaly Petrov, who had previously trained Bubka. Obiena broke the national pole vault record on July 20, 2014, at the PATAFA weekly relays with a height of 5.01 meters. The previous record was set by Edward Lasquete (5.0 meters) at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Since Obiena was just 18 years during that time, he also shattered the junior national record.

Obiena established a personal record by winning a silver medal in the Southeast Asian Games in 2015 with a leap of 5.25 meters. Despite issues with his broken pole, he achieved a new personal record at the Philippine National Games Finals in 2016, thus winning a gold medal. At the 2019 Summer Universiade, Obiena claimed gold in the men’s pole vault event, breaking the previous record with a height of 5.76 meters. He achieved a 5.81-meter finish in a competition on September 3, 2019, in Chiara, Italy, to meet the qualification mark and earn a spot in the 2020 Summer Olympics. This mark was also another national record.

He came in at 15th place out of 35 competitors in the World Athletics Championships in 2019, coming up short of making it to the final. Obiena trained in Formia, Italy for the majority of 2020 and was prevented from returning to the Philippines for Christmas by the COvid-19 pandemic. Obiena advanced to the final of the pole vault competition at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo but ended 11th overall. At the World Athletics Championships in Oregon on July 25, 2022, Obiena achieved a new national mark by lifting his best vault to 5.94 meters. With this, he scripted history to become the first Filipino to win a medal at the World Championships in the form of a Bronze.

Vitaly Petrov was the coach of EJ Obiena, although it is not known whether Petrov is still his current coach. Petrov began training Obiena in 2014. He trained great pole vaulters like Sergey Bubka, Yelena Isinbayeva, and Giuseppe Gibilisco who won gold medals in the Olympics and World Championships. When Sergey was only eleven years old in 1974, Petrov took him under his wing and served as his first coach. After 16 years, the partnership was dissolved on June 16, 1990. He has also coached Giuseppe Gibilisco of Italy from 2003 to 2007 and then in 2011 and Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia from 2005 to 2010. For his accomplishments with Isinbayeva, he was given the IAAF Coaches Award in 2007 by the International Association of Athletics Federations.

Ernest John Obiena, popularly known as EJ Obiena, was born on November 17, 1995, in Tondo, Manila, Philippines. His father Emerson is a former pole vaulter who won the silver medal at the South East Asian Games, while his mother Jeanette is a retired athlete who specialized in hurdles. Obiena began pole vaulting when he was just eight years old but initially concentrated on hurdles. Up until the age of 18, his father was his coach. Obiena represented Chiang Kai Shek College in the 100 and 400-meter hurdles events. When he was in his final years of high school, he chose to switch back to pole vaulting to earn a college scholarship after failing to qualify for regional meets.