Obiena of Philippines to miss Doha leg of the Diamond League

 

Obiena of Philippines to miss Doha leg of the Diamond League

 

A week back at the Rome leg of the Diamond League Armand Duplantis of Sweden caught the eye balls of the world-wide audience with his record-breaking leap in the Pole Vault where Ben Broeders of Belgium took the silver and EJ Obiena of Philippines took the bronze.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XoTZREAgMQ

Chances of the trio finishing on the podium at the Doha leg to be held on Friday September 24 at the Qatar Sports Club sans spectators has dismissed with the Filipino pole vaulter pulling out of the event due to visa and passport problems.

Armand Duplantis of Sweden leaped to a height of 6.15m in Italy to break a 26-year-old world record of Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergey Bubka on September 17

Both Obiena and Broeders finished with identical 5.80 clearances, but the Belgian needed two attempts to clear the height and took the silver while Obiena settled for the bronze.

“I will not be doing Doha because of visa and passport problems,” said the 24-year-old Obiena while talking to Philstar.com.

In Rome Obiena, posted his personal season best.

Obiena  remained focused on eclipsing his best and current national record of 5.81m and hopefully breach the 6.0m-mark that would give him a fighting chance at a medal in Tokyo.

And winning one would be historic since the last Olympic medal by the country in track and field came in the 1936 Berlin Games where Filipino-American Miguel White captured a 400m hurdles bronze.

To achieve that, Petrov had made drastic changes to Obiena’s training program.

“I’m giving myself time to recover and get ready for next season,” said Obiena, who had a gold, two silver and three bronzes in eight competitions he joined the last two months.

Obiena is not new to Doha having won the won gold at the Asian Athletics Championships in Qatar last year.