By TITO S. TALAO
The way Filipino pole vault qualifier EJ Obiena sees it in the wake of the worldwide viral menace, the road to the Tokyo Olympics, originally set in July, is now up in the air.
It wasn’t as incorporeal a few months ago. Back in early December, right about the time the 30th Southeast Asian Games was raging – with 11 nations and 5,630 athletes competing in 56 sports and COVID-19 a feared unknown yet – the path to the XXXII Summer Games was smooth and gleaming, with host Japan putting up a $1.4-billion New National Stadium to sit 68,000 spectators for football, rugby union, and track and field.
Obiena, 24, was raring to raise the bar. He had won the gold in the 2019 Summer Universiade in Naples, Italy in July and secured a berth to the 2020 Olympic Games by surpassing the qualifying standard for pole vault during the Salto Con L’asta in Chiari, Italy in September, leaping 5.81 meters – a national record.
Tokyo would be a giant leap of faith for him.
Then the first reports of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness came out of Wuhan, China before New Year, and Obiena’s Olympic dreams took a nightmarish turn.
“I’m definitely affected,” Obiena told Tempo’s Nick Giongco from Formia, Italy via FB.
“It’s not a nice thought that the Olympics might be moved due or even cancelled. It feels like the years of preparation will just go to waste with the pinnacle of all the competition being on the verge of cancellation.”
Obiena has been training since early 2014 under Ukrainian athletics coach Vitaly Petrov, who handled legendary pole vaulter Sergey Bubka, and was in Italy on March 9 when Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte imposed a national lockdown, restricting movement except for necessity, work, and health circumstances, in response to the growing COVID-19 outbreak.
“Our original plan was to do the indoor season but was affected and now we are planning on fixing the outdoor season,” said Obiena. “But with all the affected nations cancelling the tournaments and circuits, everything kinda is in the air.”
“We are just setting a time line of competition without specific competition and having as much contingency plans as we can like if the Olympics would be moved to the end of the year,” Obiena added.
Stuck in the country where he has been preparing for Tokyo, Obiena is making the most of the restricted environment, his limited options, and budgetary constraints.
“We are forced to live inside the training center and nobody goes out and nobody goes in. Training continues but in an even more strict manner and just overall a bit dull as the training center is empty and it’s just the Olympic-bound athletes. It would be hard to just go anywhere at the moment.”
Boxing qualifiers Eumir Felix Marcial and Irish Magno, who earned tickets to the Olympics during the Asia-Oceania tournament in Amman, Jordan last week, are in the same boat, according to Alliance of Boxing Associations in the Philippines Secretary General Ed Picson.
“I’m sure they’re a bit apprehensive about the situation,” said Picson of Marcial and Magno. “But we did discuss the fact that it is not under our control. So our mindset is, we assume the Olympics will push through.”
Qualifying to the Olympics, Picson said, has somewhat shielded the two Filipino boxers from worrying over what they’ve been hearing on the news.
“They’re still euphoric, so I don’t think it affects them so much. They leave the worrying to us.”
ABAP, said Picson, is bent on continuing the boxers’ training but only after the team had completed the required 14 days of self-quarantine upon its arrival from Amman.
“The tricky part is how to schedule international camps because many countries have adopted stringent entry rules.”
Even specialized camps for Marcial and Magno, a tournament in Spain, and the final Olympic qualifier in Paris, where more Filipino boxers hope to get through, are on hold, said Picson, with ABAP awaiting official word from the International Olympic Committee Task Force on how to proceed.
