WHAT a difference a coach makes.
While he is not admitting it, Carlos Edriel Yulo is in dire need of a competent coach, judging from the results of his competition this year, the third leg of the FIG World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan, if he intends to perform well in the Paris Olympic Games four months from now.
Yulo scored 14.366 points in the floor exercise, a poor score based on his lofty standards, to salvage a bronze medal last Saturday night in the Azerbaijani capital.
While still being coached by Japanese Munehiro Kugimiya, Yulo handily won the gold medals in the vault and parallel bars of the 2023 edition of the world meet,
In a sport where the winning edge is measured by minute percentages, it’s a far cry from the 15.300 points when the pint-sized Pinoy phenom won a historic gold medal in his forte at the 39th FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany with Kugimiya by his side in 2019.
An article written by Jo Gunston that was posted on the olympic.com website last March 8 entitled “Coach-less Gymnast Yulo Receiving Support Rivals” acknowledged the sad fact that Yulo has been without a capable mentor since cutting ties with Kugimiya in the 2023 Asian meet in Singapore.
“If Carlos Yulo was a pop star, he’d currently be managerless but collaborating with the best in his field around the world, working with different artists and producers to eke out the best of himself and gain inspiration for his next album due in July,” Gunston wrote.
The article poignantly pointed out that “the Filipino is an artistic gymnast without a coach who is dropping into gymnasiums around the world to train with athletes of the same caliber, eking out training tips from coaches at each stopover ahead of competing at Paris 2024 in less than five month’s time.”
After a two-week training stint in South Korea on the invitation of Tokyo Olympic Games veteran Lee Jun-ho, Yulo’s last stop for another two-week workout was in England at the British national training center with 2023 world vault champ Jake Jarman, before heading for Baku.
The article stressed that Jarman was “a likely contender in Paris for the floor and vault Olympic titles plus the all-around.”
Even as Yulo is able to work out with elite gymnasts, the story noted that the British Olympic bet was now “eyeing one of his competitors, the 2019 world floor champion, at close quarters. And vice versa.”
With Kugimiya gone, national coach Aldrin Castaneda has been the overseer and caretaker of Yulo in these trips, and although competent, is arguably not on the level of the celebrated Japanese, who virtually took Yulo from scratch in transforming him into a world class — and the country’s — top gymnast.
After all the globe-hopping to train for his initial outing, there seemed little visible evidence in the World Cup third leg that Yulo had at least maintained his previous level of excellence had there been a mentor to continue to guide and settle him down in previous international competitions.