Christopher Ulboc
Christopher Ulboc retains the Steeple Chase title
June 13, 2015
Christopher Ulboc Jr., 25 continued the Philippine’s rich tradition of Steeple Chase champions defending his title at the 2015 SEA Games. Consequently, Ulboc followed in the footsteps of Begeo (6) and Rene Herrera (5), and Buenavista (1) Former SEA Games champions with a number of medals in brackets.
While it was Purwanto of Indonesia who led until the last 220 meters. Most noteworthy was that Purwanto had given Ulboc a neck-to-neck battle in the last 100m of the Singapore Open at the end of March. Then Ulboc narrowly won this race.
At SEA Games 220m Tien San Pham of Vietnam surged with Ulboc pursuing and Purwanto fading out of the picture not giving chase. Hence Pham still led over the final water jump with Ulboc two strides behind. While with 100m to go Pham was still a stride and a half ahead. So Ulboc kicked again before the final barrier throwing himself over it and lunging forward. Consequently with 50m to go Ulboc knew he had won checking several times by turning his head back to look at Pham and raising his arms in the air continuously.
While Ulboc’s time of 8:59.07 was slightly outside his 8:56 clocking in Singapore. While Pham took Silver in a new personal best of 8:59.90. And Purwanto was third in 9:06.41. Furthermore, Herrera faded back to 11th of 12 runners never really in the medal hunt during this race.
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