CARLOS Edriel Yulo capped his campaign in the 10th Artistic Gymnastics Senior Asian Championships on a golden note yesterday, topping the men’s vault and parallel bar events at the OCBC Arena in Singapore.
After Japanese challenger and former world junior champion Oka Shinnosuke took the provisional lead with 15.133 points, the pint-sized Pinoy phenom, the second-to-last performer, rose to the occasion with a picture-perfect routine to retain the parallel bars crown with 15.266 points.
As the first entry in the vault, one of his pet events, Yulo had a faulty initial try, nearly kneeling on his dismount to turn in a mediocre score of 14.299 points, one of his lowest outputs in the event that he topped in the 40th World Championships in Kitakyushu, Japan in 2021 with a score of 14.916 points.
His score was also way below the 14.884 points he scored in claiming the gold in the vault in last year’s ninth edition of the tournament in Doha, Qatar.
But much to the relief of the two-time Filipino world champion, the other seven finalists were just as error-prone, with Uzbekistan’s Abdulaziz Mirvaliev winding up with the silver with 14.083 points and South Korea’s Kim Jaeho taking the bronze medal with 13.766 points.
As an icing on the cake, Yulo ended his fruitful day with a bronze medal in the horizontal bar, scoring 14.033 points behind China’s Tian Hao (14.533) and Shinnosuke (14.333), who captured the gold and silver, respectively, in the last event of the four-day competition.
Yulo emerged as the most bemedaled entry anew in the continental showcase although he failed to surpass his haul of three golds and one silver in last year’s edition, while qualifying for the World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium in September.
The country’s bets in the women’s division, Fil-Am Emma Malabuyo and Aleah Finnegan, bagged a silver (13.166) and bronze (12.833) in the floor exercise and balance beam, respectively.
“What Caloy accomplished here was truly phenomenal, and he also had a little bit of luck because the other athletes in the vault also made costly errors,” noted Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carrion.
“But now he must focus on the Worlds and the Olympics because those competitions are on another level. We hope we can build his mental strength in his preparations for these competitions,” added Carrion.
It was the best outing of the national artistic gymnastics squad under Carrion’s leadership, with Yulo, Finnegan and national team rookie Kylee Kvamme also booking tickets to the World meet set Sept. 30 to Oct. 8 in the city where the inaugural edition of the competition began in 1903.
The Filipino campaigners emerged as a surprise second overall in the Asian championships and the best in Southeast Asia with three golds, two silvers and three bronzes, including Finnegan’s bronze in the vault last Saturday.
