Obiena tumbles to world No. 3

Ernest John Obiena suffered a slight dip in his world ranking following his fourth-place finish in the men’s pole vault event of the Paris Olympics recently.

From No. 2, the 28-year-old Obiena slid to No. 3 with 1428 points in the latest ranking released by World Athletics on Thursday morning.

His heartbreaking Olympic performance played a key role to his fall.

Despite being the second-best pole vaulter in the world, he failed to land on the medal podium after posting only 5.90 meters in the Summer Games.

Swedish sensation Armand Duplantis, who shattered his personal record with an incredible 6.25-meter performance, remains on top of the ranking with 1617 points, way ahead of the 1450 points by No. 2 Sam Kendricks of the US, who clinched the silver medal in the Paris Games.

Rising star Emmanouil Karalis of Greece, who dislodged Obiena in the medal podium via countback, made a huge leap from the eighth spot to No. 4 with 1403 points, while KC Lightfoot of the US, Kurtis Marschall of Australia, and Sasma Ersu of Turkey occupy the fifth to seventh spots with 1367, 1363, 1348 points, respectively.

Rounding out the top 10 are Thibaut Collet of France and Chris Nilsen of the US with 1343 points and Obiena’s training partner in Bokai Huang of China with 1335 points.

But Obiena’s Olympic setback was quite expected.

In fact, he had a shaky performance in the preliminaries in which he failed to clear 5.60 meters twice, putting the entire country at the edge of its seat.

Although he restored order and cruised to the final round, his performance remained unreliable as he completely melted under the bright lights of Paris after failing to breach the 5.95-meter mark.

He apologized to the Filipinos, admitting that he fell short of living up to their massive expectation.

“It’s painful. I missed the medal by one jump and it wasn’t far, on my attempt of 5.95. I fell short and I think this one, it’s not painful maybe as much,” said Obiena, whose personal-best is 6.0 meters that he set in a tournament in Norway.

“You know, there’s a lot of things that happened this year. I’m thankful that I got to the final, definitely. But at the same time, I’m disappointed because it wasn’t far.”

“It’s like literally the same height. And I missed it by one attempt. One attempt at an Olympic medal.”

Obiena was part of the delegation that arrived from Paris on Tuesday night together with other Olympic achievers in double gold medalist Carlos Yulo of gymnastics and bronze medalists Nesthy Petecio and Aira Villegas of boxing.

Obiena, however, is already on his way back to his training base in Europe after spending a day in Manila in which he was able to visit President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., his former school in Chang Kai Shek College and the local government unit of the City of Manila.