DECATHLETE Janry Ubas achieved a milestone in dramatic fashion last Sunday night, bagging the bronze medal in the men’s heptathlon with a new national record of 5,246 points at the close of the 10th Asian Athletics Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Sensing his grasp for the bronze slowly slipping away, Ubas grittily overcome pain in his right thigh to finish the seventh and last event — the 1,000-meter run — in eighth place, clocking three minutes and 22.49 second, good for 461 points, which guaranteed him a podium finish.
The former FEU track and field varsity wound up third behind Japan’s Yuma Murayama and Keisuke Okuda, who took the gold and silver with scores of 5,801 and 5,497, respectively, at the close of the three-day meet held in chilling, sub-zero conditions in the Kazakh capital.
Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association secretary Edward Kho, the national team manager of the ten-man squad, said Ubas is the first Pinoy bet to win a medal in the men’s pentathlon in an Asian indoors meet and also set a new indoor record of 7.66 meters in the long jump.
Ubas built his podium performance by topping the men’s 60-meter run (7.10 seconds) and long jump (7.66 meters) while sharing first place with Murayama and Okuda in the pole vault (4.70 meters).
He also broke a seven-year Philippine dry spell in the indoor track meet organized by the Asian Athletics Association since Eric Shawn Cray took the bronze medal in the men’s 60-meter run in the 2016 edition in Doha, Qatar.
