Responsibility: Who's who

By Aries Jade N. Refugio

As the currently fifth-best men's pole vaulter Ej Obiena prepares for the upcoming Paris 2024
Olympics, the dispute between the Philippine Amateur Track and Field Association (PATAFA) became
a concern and eventually turned into another issue of laxity to our Athlete.

The accusation against Obiena was an eye-opener and surprised the Filipino people, it is after
the PATAFA shared with the public that Obiena "received a complaint" from his Coach Vitaly Petrov
for the 85,000 euros or 4.8 million pesos of late payment which the Coach already denies. PATAFA
also investigating how the funds are coming from different bank accounts including his mother's
account. After the news came out, Obiena immediately called a press conference with Coach Petrov
to clear his name.

"Nobody asked me any question, nobody asked for clarity of supporting documentation," he
said. "They just leveled their charges against me. This runs counter to any principles of justice from
what I believe is 'Innocence until proven guilty.'"

PATAFA let the Athletes handle the paper works and distribute the money for their rent, bills,
and salary of his coaching staff. As far as we know, the job of our athletes is to train and be better for
upcoming events. It is a question now that why the accounting matter is now making a mess in public
and destroying Obiena’s reputation. This has been already complained to PATAFA, athletes should not
handle the money because they have no time to take care of the expenses due to their long heavy
training season. There must be people doing the transaction for them to avoid this kind of situation.

Working hard every day to compete and represent the country yet the support and
understanding are missing. It seems like the federation expects the job of an Athlete to be easy, of all
the responsibilities they have and knowing they are also struggling financially. Competing
internationally is not about making money, the cash prizes they earned are just bonuses.

This embezzlement issue was a candidly false accusation following the Coach and his Mentor
Jim Lafferty's contradiction saying the coach has nothing to do with the complaint like what PATAFA
said. PATAFA transmitted the notice to Obiena last November 15 and gave him 48 hours to respond
which Obiena did and the news still got out to the public.

“I was never Philip Juico’s pole vault coach, I am the coach of Thiago Braz, Sergey Bubka,
Yelena Isinbaeva, and Ej Obiena. I am proudly the coach of these hard-working Athletes. Now that Ej
is finally a top 5 pole vaulter in the world, his own Federation President, Philip Ella Juico kicks him out
of the team for nothing. In my opinion, athletes should only be thinking about their training and
performance everything else is an additional burden and distraction that they don’t need," Coach
Petrov said.

Leaking it to the public made the situation much worse without thinking about the
consequences. We can tell that PATAFA handled the situation unreasonably messy, and they call it
"good governance". The longer they talk about it with the public, the more stress and hassle Obiena
takes instead of preparing himself every day to train. They could have just talked face-to-face in a
closed room and ended it right away.

Not to mention, these are just a few of the many conflicts a certain athlete encounters. The
fact that we are also benefiting from what Obiena achieved and will achieve in his future
competitions. Recently, he just raised again the Philippine Flag in the 2021 Paris Diamond League with
a runner-up finish and sets a new national record.

We are not new to this, there are a lot of Filipino athletes who decided to change their
citizenship like Super Grandmaster Wesley So, who dominates the world of chess with a peak of 2822
and becomes World’s No. 2 behind the World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Also, Jack Danielle Anima is
a Filipina Basketball Star who tops at a University in Taiwan.
 The National Team is again facing the risk of losing a prominent athlete who came from the
bottom and now dominates international competitions. Obiena is currently the hottest competitor in
the field making other nations offer a passport as the controversy reached them. But Obiena clearly
says “Loyalty is a virtue”, and money will not be the reason to change his citizenship and play for
another country.

It's a time of the pandemic, but the passion of Athletes has never been silent. We can see
that they are still in a lot of work for the honor and glory they want to bring to our land. But why are
the officials always the problem of the athletes in the Philippines?

People may agree that we are losing a lot of opportunities because of the lack of support
from the officials. We already experienced Athletes walking away to abandon our country and we
don’t want this to happen again. The Government must take it seriously and fix the system before it’s
too late, don’t expect the athletes are serving the Philippines like a worker, bringing Olympic Medals
for your benefit.