SINGAPORE – Filipino two-time gymnastics world champion Carlos Yulo is set to be among the stars competing at the June 10-18 Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Singapore.
The 23-year-old will be hoping to add to his tally of three Asian championship golds at the OCBC Arena. At the 2022 Doha Asian meet, he came up tops in the floor exercise, vault and parallel bars but could only finish a close second to China’s Shi Cong in the all-around, with his total of 83.767 points just shy of Shi’s 83.833.
While he missed April’s Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Cairo owing to an ankle sprain, Yulo is expected to feature at the Cambodia SEA Games before testing himself against some of the world’s best in Singapore.
He won five golds and two silvers at the previous edition in Vietnam in 2022.
He said: “For this upcoming competition in Singapore, I’m excited to see how we have improved along with the other competitors.”
Singapore will be staging the Asian junior championships from June 10-12 before the June 15-18 senior championships.
Apart from Yulo, the field at the Singapore Sports Hub will include other gymnastics stars such as the evergreen Oksana Chusovitina, an eight-time Olympian.
An Olympic gold medallist at the 1992 Barcelona Games when she was just 17, Chusovitina most recently won a gold for Uzbekistan at the 2021 Islamic Solidarity Games aged 47.
She is the oldest gymnast to compete at an Olympics, having taken part in her eighth Games at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
China, Japan and South Korea have also confirmed their participation in the Singapore event, with teams scheduled to announce their line-ups next week.
Organisers are hopeful that the likes of Chinese Taipei’s 2020 Olympics silver medallist Lee Chih-kai and Indonesia’s 2018 Asian Games silver medallist Rifda Irfanaluthfi will be among those competing here.
The upcoming competition is a key event on the path to the Paris 2024 Olympics as athletes can use it to earn their slots for the 2023 world championships in Belgium, a qualification event for the quadrennial competition.
Singapore Gymnastics president Patrick Liew said: “We’re excited to have the biggest gymnastics nations confirming their participation for both the Asian Senior Championships and the Asian Junior Championships.
“This is the first time that Singapore is hosting events of such magnitude and the presence of some of the world’s biggest names in the sport will go a long way to growing the sport here and establishing Singapore as a regional hub for gymnastics.”
Added Singapore women’s team captain Nadine Joy Nathan: “It will be an opportunity for the gymnastics community and public to watch Asia’s best in action and experience, first-hand, the atmosphere of a high-level international competition.
“For athletes, competing on home ground with friends and family cheering us on will be a special experience.”
At the 2022 Asian championships in Qatar, China topped the medal tally with eight golds, three silvers and five bronzes, while the Philippines (3-1-0) and South Korea (2-2-4) were second and third respectively.
Ticket sales for the June 10-12 Asian junior championships and June 15-18 Asian senior championships will begin from Friday at 9am here.
