Obiena in Chula Vista for Paris preps

AWORLD-CLASS athlete needs a world-class facility so world No. 3 pole vaulter Ernest John “EJ” Obiena set up training camp at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center to prepare for the Paris Olympics.

“Everything’s good here in Chula Vista when it comes to our training,” the 28-year-old Obiena, Asia’s top pole vaulter, said. “We’ve been training so hard trying to improve everything from physique to psychological aspects.”

Obiena is with his renowned Ukranian coach Vitaly Petrov Saudi Arabian pole vaulter Hussain Al Hizam in the California facility that the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee put up in 1995 to train its elite and Olympic athletes.

The training camp will last 45 days with Obiena heading to the University of California, Los Angeles to compete in his first outdoor tournament for the year in the Los Angeles Grand Prix.

They are pondering a second competition in the US before returning to Formia for the last phase of their preparation for the Olympics set from July 26 to August 11.

Obiena was the first Filipino to qualify for Paris when he cleared the Olympic standard of 5.82 meters last July 2 for a silver medal at the Diamond League Bauhaus Galan in Stockholm.

Obiena, meanwhile, only took in stride World Athletics’ $50,000 offer for each gold medal won in track and field in Paris.

“Reward or no reward, ny ultimate goal is to bring home the country’s second Olympic gold medal,” said Obiena, who praised Hidilyn Diaz-naranjo, the country’s first Olympic gold medalist.

“Hidilyn will forever be our inspiration in the Olympics, and we will always be grateful to what she did for the entire nation,” he said.

Diaz-naranjo missed a fifthstraight Olympic appearance after failing to make the cut—world’s top 10—in women’s -59 kgs of weightlifting. She won gold in Tokyo at -56 kgs which was scrapped for Paris.