Alyana Nicolas

Happy birthday to the Philippines’ pole vault champion Alyana Nicolas, a two-time national champion, a SEA Games medallist, and the woman who brought the four-metre bar back to Filipina vaulting.

May 2025, New Clark City. Alyana retained her national title with a clearance of 4.00m — the first time a Filipina had cleared four metres in six years. That is the kind of result that resets a whole event’s expectations in a country, and she produced it as the defending champion, with everybody watching to see whether she could do it twice. She did, and the number she hit made national news on its own.

Her career has been built across two coastlines. She came up through the Fil-Am pole vault pipeline in California, took her personal best to 4.06m in Hayward, and has spent more than a decade splitting her life between the West Coast and Manila to keep representing the Philippines. She has a bronze medal from the SEA Games in Hanoi, back-to-back national titles in 2024 and 2025, a top-eight finish at the Asian Championships, and the sort of longevity in a technical event that only comes from doing the boring parts properly, year after year, for years.

Pole vault does not tolerate shortcuts and it does not tolerate absence. Alyana has stayed at the top of it in her country for over a decade while also building a career as a fitness coach. That is not persistence, that is a profession.

Maligayang kaarawan, Alyana! Maligayang bati and every good wish for the year ahead — health, joy and bars that keep going up. Mabuhay! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇵🇭