OPINION | EJ Obiena: No apologies needed

August 6, 2024 , 08:05 PM

By Anthony Divinagracia*

(August 6, 2024) – What’s so good about fourth place?

Perhaps, getting the front seat to watch the podium.

One of my teachers used to say fourth place is no good.

“Wala namang medal ‘yun! Certificate lang,” her voice thundered to memory.

The venom of her logic stings, but it was spot-on. Or in today’s language, real talk.

EJ Obiena knew it as he agonizingly waited for the last three vaulters to finish.

He was there. And nowhere.

Indeed, he was there. But fate didn’t care.

Yes, he was there. Reduced to a blank stare.

TV cameras painted the telling contrast between fourth placer and eventual winner as EJ sunk in a seat of silence behind Armand Duplantis, the superhuman who defied the gods of gravity to claim Olympic immortality.

“It’s painful. I missed the medal by one jump, and it wasn’t far, all my attempts at 95. Yeah, disappointed, definitely,” he said, almost welling in frustration.

On a warm Monday evening, EJ pondered why 5.95 meters betrayed him. It was a friend that had his back when he cleared 6 meters in last year’s World Championship to bag the silver.

Huang Bokai, the Chinese vaulter who took an early exit in the competition, sat beside EJ probably to console his emotionally ravaged friend.

But these words of comfort hardly needled through the pain like an amateur acupuncture that missed its mark as much as EJ’s last three jumps.

Failure, like my old teacher’s remarks, stings. No fourth-placer in the right fly of a valuter’s mind would celebrate such a non-feat on the Olympic stage, especially when the difference between medalling and nothing is as slim as dead air.

It was a non-feat, a mental con because there’s actually no podium to step on, despite EJ improving on an 11th place finish three years ago. To him, nothing has changed since Tokyo.

“4th place is painful to say the least; and in sports with three podium places, perhaps 4th is the harshest place to be. I am heartbroken that a single failure cost me and cost a nation I so deeply love—the podium,” he wrote in an Instagram post.

EJ apologized profusely to his countrymen as if he has committed a crime. But no, the man is principled enough to admit he has failed us.

Yet who are we to demand and carouse at such admission? Reading some livestream comments as EJ agonized in silence is painful. Heartbreaking. Soul-crushing.

Much more than fourth place.

Much more than watching others on the podium.

Much more than struggling to hold back tears during an interview.

The same teacher used to tell us why wounds hurt when treated.

“Ibig sabihin tumatalab. Nalilinis ang sugat mo.”

Painful as the wounds maybe, part of the cure sometimes is to endure.

This may not be about resilience, the often-abused word to “conquer” tragedies and controversies endemic to Philippine experience.

But if anything, resilience grows in the soil of silence. The Instagram photo of EJ beaming at the plush purple of the Stade de France spoke beyond words.

It was the silence he needed to heal the physical and psychological wounds that bruised his mortal resolve and confidence.

“Pressure is a privilege,” EJ once said.

For now, that privilege stands at 5:95 meters. Let it wait in agony as EJ did.

The pressure? It’s on us. As the elders say, the true believer never leaves the manger.

Prudence is the father of creation. Patience is the mother of redemption. We redeem ourselves by creating good opportunities as EJ did in the past. What’s stopping him from doing it today and in the next? To all these, no explanation is wanted, no apologies needed.

Carlos Yulo, the GOAT of Philippine gymnastics with two shiny Olympic golds to date, once placed fourth in Tokyo. The rest is history.

My teacher used to say fourth place is no good.

EJ Obiena knows that for a fact.

And he will be back. Brace for impact.

*The author is the head of News5 Digital

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