AN intriguing and riveting three-way battle looms among Japan’s Wataru Tanigawa, Daiki Hashimoto and Carlos Edriel Yulo for the prestigious individual men’s all-around gold medal tomorrow in the 51st Artistic Gymnastics World Championships at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England.
With a just a fraction of a point separating them, Tanigawa, Hashimoto and Yulo finished 1-2-3 in the men’s all-around qualifiers last Monday with scores of 84.731, 84.665 and 84.664 points, respectively.
Were it not for a .10 penalty he incurred in his first try in the vault, the Pinoy gymnastics sensation could have easily topped the men’s all-around qualifying meet in the global showcase that has drawn 400 athletes from 72 countries.
Performing near-flawlessly, Yulo, the 2019 world men’s floor exercise champion, topped his pet event with a score of 15.266 points and finished second in the vault (14.266) and fourth in the parallel bars (15.300), making his goal of three gold medals in each event within reach during the two-day apparatus finals scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.
“We will be happy for at least a podium finish in the men’s all-around, and that in itself would be a remarkable achievement for Caloy,” noted Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carrion.
To stay in the medal hunt, Carrion said Yulo needs to avoid the pitfalls he suffered in the pommel horse, where he slipped, and the horizontal bar where he had low scores of 11.666 and 13.533, respectively.
“If Caloy remains steady in the pommel horse and horizontal bar, he might have a fighting chance at a medal on Friday,” said the gymnastics chief, who prayed with the gymnast just before he competed in the qualifiers. “I told him that we are all a team, and that includes God.”
Yulo, who has been training in Tokyo since 2016 under Japanese national coach Munehiro Kugimiya, is familiar with his Japanese rivals, including Hashimoto, the reigning Tokyo Olympic Games men’s all-around champion and silver medalist in the last world meet in Kitakyushu, Japan.
“Of course, I would like to beat them (Tanigawa and Hashimoto). This is the first time I’m going to be in the first group and it is a big, big achievement for me,” said the pint-sized phenom, who finished 10th overall the last time he saw action in the all-around in the 2019 edition in Stuttgart, Germany.
