PARIS GAMES PREVIEW
Obiena faces fellow stars in world indoor tilt
EJ Obiena will get a glimpse of what’s in store for him in the 2024 Paris Olympics when he battles with fellow Olympians in the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, Scotland this weekend.
The pole vault competition is scheduled on Sunday, March 3, with the world No. 2 Obiena seeking nothing but a historic podium finish in the tournament.
Obiena had actually won a bronze (2022 Eugene) and a silver (2023 Budapest) in the World Championships, which were held outdoors, and the Tondo native is eager to add more accolades in his growing war chest.
But that is easier said than done as Obiena will be up against a familiar but challenging lineup composed of Paris and 2020 Tokyo Olympians.
Spearheading the charge based on the lineup as of Feb.25 is world No. 1 Armand “Mondo” Duplantis of Sweden, who is defending his title after ruling the event with a thenworld record of 6.20m in the 2022 Belgrade edition.
Also seeing action are fellow Paris Games qualifiers Thibaut Collet of France, Kurtis Marschall of Australia, Menno Vloon of the Netherlands, Piotr Lisek of Poland, Ersu Sasma of Turkey, and Emmanouil Karalis of Greece.
World No. 3 Chris Nilsen, who won the bronze in the previous edition, will also be competing along with fellow Americans world No. 5 Sam Kendricks and world No. 22 Austin Miller, as well as world No. 8 Ben Broeders of Belgium and world No. 22 Robert Sobera of Poland.
Except for Kendricks, Collet and Miller, the rest of the field also competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics along with Obiena.
Obiena is coming off two golden performances to boost his campaign — at the Memorial Josip Gasparac in Croatia with a 5.83m feat and at the ISTAF Indoor in Germany.
Pending ratification, Obiena’s feat in Germany, where he registered 5.93m, erased the 26-year-old Asian indoor mark of 5.92m held by Kazakhstan’s Igor
Potapovich.