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 2020 Tokyo Olympics, originally set in granite for July, is now up in the air.
From left, boxer Eumir Felix Marcial, pole vaulter EJ Obiena, gymnast Carlos Yulo and boxer Irish Magno are the four Filipino athletes who qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. (Handout photos / Yulo's photo courtesy of Janeth Tenorio)
It wasn’t as incorporeal a few months ago. Back in early December 2019, 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 not yet a feared unknown – the path to the XXXII Summer Games was smooth and gleaming, with host Japan putting up a US$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, soaring 5.81 meters – a national record.
Philippines' Ernest John Obiena , celebrates after winning in the men's pole vault athletics event in the 30th Southeast Asian Games at the New Clark City Athletics Stadium in Clark City, Capas, Tarlac, December 7, 2019. (Photo by TED ALJIBE / AFP)
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 tells MB Sports’ Nick Giongco from Formia, Italy via FB.
“It’s not a nice thought that the Olympics might be moved or even canceled. It feels like years of preparation will just go to waste with the pinnacle of all the competition being on the verge of cancellation.”
Eumir Marcial shows his "ticket" to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
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,” says 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.”
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.
Philippines' Irish Magno shows her ticket to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“I’m sure they’re a bit apprehensive about the situation,” says 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 says, 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, says 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, says Picson, with ABAP awaiting official word from the International Olympic Committee Task Force on how to proceed.
“Anyway, once we resume local training two weeks from now, we will explore all our options,” says Picson.
Whatever options remain to Carlos Edriel Yulo, the breathtaking dynamo who twirled and somersaulted his way to fame by winning a historic gold medal in the floor exercise of the World Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany last October, are also being considered, for certain, by the national gymnastics association, headed by its president Cynthia Carrion.
Yulo came away from the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) Apparatus World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan last week without a medal and is reportedly back in his training home base in Japan, with practically all international competitions heading to the Olympics postponed, suspended or outright canceled.
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Carlos Yulo performs in still rings in the 30th Southeast Asian Games to bag the gold in the men's artistic gymnastics. (MB File Photo)
And so they await – EJ Obiena, Eumir Felix Marcial, Irish Magno and Carlos Edriel Yulo – for what the near future holds as far as the Summer Games are concerned. Having trained a lifetime to reach the pinnacle of athletic competition, only to watch helpless as an unseen malaise threatens to wipe out the path to their ultimate dreams, the suspense could only be gripping.
But EJ Obiena has this advice to his fellow Olympic qualifiers, something he must have felt in the rarified air above the bar at the highest peak of his vault: “I would just tell them to zone in into your craft. Don’t let the noise and distractions get into you. It’s very disappointing but all this is part of the process.” (with a report from Nick Giongco)