By KRISTEL SATUMBAGA
A preview of the 2024 Paris Olympics hostilities takes place on Sunday, July 7, as pole vaulter EJ Obiena sees action in the Meeting de Paris Wanda Diamond League at the Estadio Charlety in France.
There, Obiena will go up against 10 other Paris Games-bound pole vaulters, including reigning Olympic and world champion Armand “Mondo” Duplantis, all of them hoping to fine-tune their techniques before the big day.
Apart from Duplantis, also taking part are Ben Broeders of Belgium, Thibaut Collet and Robin Emig of France, Emmanouil Karalis of Greece, Kurtis Marschall of Australia, and United States bets Sam Kendricks, Chris Nilsen and Jacob Wooten.
The presence of American KC Lightfoot and Polish Piotr Lisek could not also be discounted, as they both competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Lisek, in particular, boasts of three medals in the world championships.
The world No. 2 Obiena, who was the first Filipino to qualify for Paris, is upbeat of his preparations for the Olympics as he tries to lean on his back-to-back golden feats in Poland last month.
He cleared a season-best 5.97 meters at the 6th Irena Szewinska Memorial in Bydgoszcz last June 20 and followed it up with a 5.87m feat at the Czeslaw Cybulski Memorial in Poznan three days later.
He also boasts of an Asian record of 6.00m which he posted last year.
But this Parisian tournament is expected to challenge Obiena’s preparations especially with the presence of Duplantis, the reigning Olympic champion.
The Swedish superstar, a three-time Diamond League winner, has been registering 6-meter marks a couple of times this season, including in the Wanda Diamond League Xiamen in China last April where he reset his own world record to 6.24m.
World No. 3 Nilsen, who won silver in the 2020 Tokyo Games, is also another player fancied to finish at the podium after topping the US Olympic trials, as well as Kendricks, a two-time world champion and bronze winner of the 2016 Rio Games.
