He showed the perspective coming from a fellow national athlete.
In a social media post on Monday, October 19, Filipino pole vaulter EJ Obiena shared some “food for thought” with his followers as he shared his opinion amid the criticisms earned by Filipina tennis star Alex Eala amid her string of losses on the international stage.
The 30-year-old, who also had his fair share of challenges in the past years following his back injury, said that their performance strongly define them as athletes.
“The day of competition, unfairly, validates the thousands of hours we have spent training and pushing,” he stressed, adding mere seconds can define a year’s worth of training or even a lifetime of hard work.
“It’s a brutally tough business, and the chances of failure are far larger than those of success. Imagine your professional life being defined by one meeting; one project; one day of work? That is sports, with its curves and edges,” he added.
For him, in any sport, the chances of having a bad competition, a streak of losses, or even a bad season are practically guaranteed at some point.
“Perfection can be an objective; yet is never achieved. Only a few legends can claim to have won it all, and even they lose more than they win. The statistics would make it clear as day,” he continued.
EJ also emphasized that athletes are human beings too, even though they may be treated as “Gods” of some sort.
“Everyone reading this is the same. You have a good day. And sometimes you have bad days where everything goes wrong,” the pole vaulter wrote.
“You go to your job, you have a horrible meeting or a project goes awry. Are you fired? No. Because we all have bad days. This is called life and being human.”
Obiena also stressed that failure is not synonymous with losing.
“So asking if Alex’s (Eala) string of losses suggests she has failed is the wrong question (or for any national athlete for that matter, yours truly included),” he furthered. “There is no such thing as failure in attempting, and in sports, there are good days and bad days, and some days you win and some days you lose, which is what gives sport its beauty and toughness.”
EJ also shared the analogy of when a boss gives their people a pat on the back during a “loss”, the toughest athlete has tough stretches and needs a pat on the back.
“Pulling out knives on social media I can tell you won’t help. If you want to help Alex, me or any of our athletes, pick them up when they are down. Kicking someone when they are having a bad day is poor recipe for getting the desired result you seek,” he reminded the netizens.
To end, EJ posed a question that these people need to ask for themselves: “How do I want to be supported when I have a bad day?”
“And act accordingly. That’s the classy thing to do,” he concluded.
