Philippine's pole vaulter EJ Obiena in action during 2019 SEA games athletics competition at the New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac on December 7, 2019. Mark Demayo, ABS-CBN News
MANILA - World Athletics has ranked Filipino pole vaulter EJ Obiena’s record-setting performance last year as one of the top 10 performances of 2021.
The international governing body for athletics also ranks the Olympian Obiena as 6th worldwide in pole vaulting.
Obiena set a new Asian pole vaulting record of 5.93 meters at the 2021 Golden Roof Challenge in Austria in September last year.
This landed him in the third spot of the World Athletics top 10 performances of the year, along with USA's Sam Kendricks and Russian athlete Timur Morgunov.
Obiena was embroiled in a tiff with the Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association's Philip Ella Juico over alleged irregularities over his liquidation reports.
The Philippine Olympic Committee meanwhile declared Juico persona non grata last week saying the PATAFA official “harassed” Obiena by making “malicious public accusations.”