IN his second indoor meet this year, back-to-back Olympic Games veteran Ernest John Obiena jumped a season-best 5.70 meters early yesterday morning (Saturday afternoon in Europe) to rule the men’s pole vault event of the Meeting de Metz Moselle Athlelor in Metz, France.
Obiena took two jumps to win the gold, easily beating Dutchman Menno Vloon, who jumped six times before hitting the mark, a five-centimeter improvement on his second-place finish in the International Jump meet in Cottbus, Germany last Jan. 29.
American Tokyo Summer Games silver medalist Chris Nilsen, the first to go over six meters this year, clearing 6.01 meters to top the Perch’Extrem meet in Caen, France last Feb. 3, had an off day and settled for the bronze with a jump of 5.60 meters.
“Merci Beaucoup Metz!!!” exclaimed Obiena in his post on his official Facebook page shortly after his first gold of the year after spending the holidays for some time in Manila
“Will take the season’s best and a dub (gold) !!! Now time to sleep and get some much-needed rest as we go back at it tomorrow!!!” added Obiena, who won’t have the luxury of savoring his triumph long.
He was scheduled to compete yesterday (Monday morning in Manila) at the ISTAF Indoor meet, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver event, at the PSB Bank Dome in Dusseldorf, Germany against another elite cast led by Paris Olympic silver medalist Sam Kendricks of the US.
Fil-Am and national athletic team hopeful Victoria Bossong, competing for Harvard, bagged a gold and a silver while setting new school records at the Scarlet and White Invite meet at the Boston University Track and Tennis Center in Boston, Massachusetts over the weekend.
Bossong topped the women’s 1,000-meter run in two minutes and 41.66 seconds for a new school record, sinking the two-year-old standard of Maia Ramsden of 2:43.03.
The Crimson senior, whose dentist-mother Annie Atienza Bossong was born in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro, led a 2-3 finish for Harvard in the women’s 400-meter run, bagging the silver in 52.02 seconds while teammate Chloe Fair took third (52.92) in the close race won by Canadian Lauren Gale (51.79).
Bossong and Fair surpassed the nine-year-old indoor Harvard mark of 53.89 seconds set by Autumne Franklin, with the former also eclipsing the PH record of 53.71 seconds set by Paris Olympian Lauren Hoffman at the Tiger Paw Invitational in Clemson, South Carolina in February 2024.
Bossong’s clocking was even better than the 52.23 seconds of Malaysian women’s 400-meter champion Shereen Samson Vallabouy in the 2023 Cambodia Southeast Asian Games.
