National jumper Tia Rozario earns first SEA Games berth after reuniting with coach Valeri Obidko

SINGAPORE – When Tia Rozario was in her early teens, the national jumper was already outleaping her rivals, clearing 5.5 metres with her long jumps and dominating school competitions.

Recognising her potential, Valeri Obidko, her jumps coach at the Singapore Sports School then, set her a target of 6m.

More than 10 years later, with coach and protege reunited, Rozario, 24, has finally hit that target and in doing so, qualified for her first SEA Games by meeting the 6.02m qualifying mark.

At the Thailand Open Track Field Championships on June 22, Rozario shattered her previous personal best of 5.95m. At the National Athletics Centre in Pathum Thani, she leapt an impressive 6.16m, just two centimetres shy of the national record set by Eugenia Tan in 2015.

Rozario, who cleared 6m thrice, earned the silver medal, while Sri Lanka’s Madushani Herath (6.37m) won the gold and Thailand’s Supawat Choothong (6.01m) bagged the bronze.

Rozario said: “I’m definitely very excited to have qualified for the SEA Games for the first time. But I think I was more excited to finally hit the 6m milestone... We’ve waited close to 10 years for this moment so it’s really special and feels like a full circle moment that I got to hit six metres with coach by my side.”

Obidko was appointed the national jumps coach by Singapore Athletics in January 2024.

It marked a return to the sunny island for the Georgia-born Singaporean, who had two stints as SSP jumps coach (2004-2009 and 2013-2015),sandwiching his tenure as national jumps coach from 2009 to 2013.

Rozario and Obidko worked together from 2013 till 2015, when he left to become coach of Thailand’s national jumpers.

They reunited last July when Rozario returned to Singapore after completing her master’s degree in biomedical science at Duke