Philippines’ star gymnast Carlos Yulo looks beyond Asia, seeks historic Olympic gold
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Carlos Yulo on his way to winning the men’s parallel bars at the Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships on June 18.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
SINGAPORE – Despite battling fatigue, Filipino gymnastics sensation Carlos Yulo delivered two golds and one bronze with clean execution and landings on Sunday, the final day of the Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships.
In the process, he became the most bemedalled athlete at the meet with five medals, three of which are gold.
Before a 1,100-strong crowd at the OCBC Arena on Sunday, the 23-year-old pocket dynamo first won the men’s vault despite having “soft legs”.
His score of 14.299 was good enough to beat Uzbekistan’s Abdulaziz Mirvaliev (14.083) and South Korea’s Kim Jae-ho (13.766) into second and third place respectively.
Yulo was also on point in the parallel bars, scoring 15.266 for his third gold in Singapore. Japan’s Shinnosuke Oka (15.133) and China’s Yin Dehang (15.100) claimed silver and bronze respectively.
Having won an individual all-around silver on Thursday and a floor exercise gold on Saturday, Yulo admitted to feeling fatigued, but made one last push to take home his fifth medal – a bronze in the high bar with 14.033 points – behind China’s Tian Hao (14.533) and Oka (14.366).
Yulo, who was competing in front of his younger siblings Karl and Eliza – both of whom had participated in the junior championships earlier – told The Straits Times: “I was already tired when I got out here, especially in the morning. But I cannot give excuses, so I told myself to just have fun and give it my best.
“I’m really grateful to be able to perform well this week. I still can improve in every apparatus that I do, and I’m going to do my best to level up my game.”
Since bursting onto the scene at the 2018 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, where he became the first Filipino and the first male South-east Asian gymnast to win a medal at the level with a bronze in the floor exercise, Yulo has been ticking off boxes at the Asian and world meets.
Where he once would have been pleased to win a historic Olympic medal of any colour, his appetite has been whetted by a fourth-placed finish in the vault at the delayed Tokyo 2020 as well as world championship gold medals in the floor exercise (2019) and vault (2021). His sights are now firmly set on Olympic qualification and then bringing home the gold from Paris 2024.
He told ST that progression, and not perfection, is what he is chasing as he learns from experiences, which include errors in the floor exercise qualifying round that kept him out of the eight-man final in Tokyo in 2021.
Yulo said: “I have decided to skip the (Sept 23-Oct 8) Asian Games to attend the world championships (Sept 30-Oct 8) because that’s also the Olympic qualifiers. Right now, I’m at 75 per cent of where I want to be in terms of difficulty and execution heading to the Olympics.
“I want to win gold at the world championships, but also to deliver good performances like always.
“Then, Olympic gold is definitely the goal. I don’t think I would have made the same progress without making the many mistakes I did in Tokyo. That was a lesson that will stay with me forever.”
Also looking to progress through the ranks is China’s Tian. The 21-year-old Zhejiang native who won the men’s high bar, told ST: “I failed at every event at the national championships (in May), but now I can breathe a sigh of relief as I have finally done justice to the hard training I have put in.”
His compatriot Zhang Qingying won the women’s balance beam and floor exercise events as China became the most successful country at this competition by claiming eight out of 14 gold medals.
