EJ Obiena’s plan is working. The results are starting to show it.
The Filipino pole vaulter claimed his first outdoor title of the season on Monday (Philippine time), clearing 5.72 meters on his second attempt to win the Czesław Cybulski Memorial 2026 at the Golecin Stadion in Poznan, Poland. He beat a field of 10 international competitors that included hometown favorite Piotr Lisek in a World Athletics Continental Tour Silver meeting.
A First Outdoor Gold This Season for Obiena
It is the first gold of an outdoor campaign that has been building steadily since Obiena opened in Dusseldorf with a silver and a season-high 5.74 meters. There were stumbles along the way—a last-place finish in Doha after getting stuck at 5.62 meters, and a narrow miss in the FBK Games in the Netherlands where he jumped 5.64 but lost to Menno Vloon on countback. The trajectory was not always clean. But Obiena kept competing, kept adjusting, and kept trusting the process that brought him to Athens.
On this occasion in Poznan, he was in command. He cleared 5.40 meters on his first attempt, 5.60 on his second, skipped 5.67, and then made his winning jump at 5.72 to put the gold out of reach. Great Britain’s Owen Heard and Italy’s Matteo Oliveri both cleared 5.60—with Heard taking the silver on countback. With the title secured, Obiena pushed higher, attempting 5.77 and then 5.82 in search of a season best. He did not make either. But that he was reaching for more, with nothing left to prove in that competition, says something about the mindset he is carrying into this outdoor stretch.
A Gamble That Seems to Be Paying Off
Context matters here. Early this June, Obiena had just made his boldest career decision in years as he left Formia, Italy and the decade-long partnership with coach Vitaly Petrov to relocate to Athens and train alongside a group of international vaulters. He framed it in terms of competitive environment: that the daily push from elite training partners was the missing ingredient, that Olympic medals are won in training, and that he needed to put himself somewhere that demanded his best every single day.
The Poznan gold is the second positive data point from this new chapter—the first being the opening silver in Dusseldorf. Two of his four outdoor starts have produced podium finishes, and the competition calendar is only getting denser. Athens is next, on July 5 at the historic Panathenaic Stadium in the Fly Athens 2026 Street Pole Vault—a Continental Tour Silver meeting that features world No. 2 Emmanouil Karalis of Greece and former world record holder and Rio Olympics champion Renaud Lavillenie of France. Obiena will be far from the favorite on that card. He will be competing anyway.
More Work in Store
Beyond Athens, the Nagoya Asian Games in September loom as the season’s centerpiece—a title defense for the reigning Asian Games champion that also serves as a crucial step in his campaign toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
The ten-competition outdoor plan that the PATAFA laid out at the start of the season has a gold medal in it now. The road to Nagoya runs through Athens, Stockholm, Oslo, Ostrava, Paris, Budapest, London, Lausanne, Brussels, and Budapest again for the World Athletics Ultimate Championships in September.
Obiena is finding his form at exactly the right time. The move to Greece was a bet on himself. So far, the bet is paying off.
