Brown joins Obiena in quick exit

MANILA, Philippines — Robyn Brown followed pole vault ace EJ Obiena to the exits as she bowed out of the women’s 400-meter hurdles in the World Athletics Championships yesterday in Tokyo.

Brown clocked 57.03 seconds and wound up ninth and last in Heat 1 as she fell way short of a Top 4 finish in her group and an outright ticket to Wednesday’s semifinal races.

Overall, the world No. 63 Fil-Am ranked 40th in the heats, higher only than Yanick Haye-Smith of Turks and Caicos Island, who submitted 58.48 in Heat 5.

The 31-year-old Brown’s elimination completed the shutout of the two-member Team Philippines.

She got the boot two days after world No. 7 Obiena missed the cut for the 12-man pole vault finals. Obiena, silver medalist in the 2023 worlds, placed 18th overall in Saturday’s Qualification Round with a meager 5.55m vault. Swedish titan Armand Duplantis bannered the cast of finalists who logged identical 5.75m marks during the preliminaries.