WITHOUT Japanese coach Munehiro Kugimiya by his side, Carlos Edriel Yulo’s bid to qualify for the Paris Olympic Games next year will have to wait longer after he suffered his worst finish in the 52nd FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium early yesterday (Sunday night in Europe).
Believing he could go on his own minus the Japanese mentor’s calm and assuring yet strict guidance, Yulo, 23, performed like a lost little boy, wallowing in 59th and last place with a meager 67.765 points in the men’s individual all-around after bad showings in the men’s ring and vault apparatus at the Sportspaleis.
The beginning of the end started in the rings, his second to the last among the six apparatuses, where he slipped and fell badly on his back, winding up 90th out of 93 entries with a score of 11.566.
With his back still sore from the accident, Yulo flopped on his back on his first run on the vault, scoring 6.766, but could no longer continue due to the pain, ending up with no point for not completing the event where he was the gold medalist in the 2021 edition in Kitakyushu, Japan.
Yulo managed to score 14.600 points in the floor exercise, where he finished third overall, 13.20 in the pommel horse, 14.666 on the parallel bars and 13.000 on the high bar.
“I did not want Caloy to continue in the vault because of his bad fall but he persisted. But it was obvious he could no longer continue on his second run,” said gymnastics chief Cynthia Carrion in an overseas interview yesterday after the qualifiers.
Carrion said that Yulo, who acknowledged that he had parted ways with Kugimiya in a podcast interview from Belgium, was inconsolable after the disappointing outing.
“I will have a long talk with him (Yulo) today and see if he can still compete in the floor exercise finals on Thursday,” said Carrion.
As result of his dismal all-around showing, the pint-sized gymnast, who was once tipped as a solid gold medal prospect in the Paris Summer Games, will now have to face a more difficult route, needing to top the men’s all-around event in the Asian championships in Doha, Qatar early next year to punch an Olympic ticket.
The top eight finishers in the men’s individual all-around qualifiers at the worlds automatically earned slots to the Paris Games.
A GAP source, who declined to be identified, said Yulo parted ways with Kugimiya, a strict disciplinarian, after the coach ordered him to commit to his training religiously, but this became difficult as his Filipino-Australian girlfriend, Chloe San Jose, allegedly insisted that he spend more time with her.
The girlfriend became a disruptive influence on the highly-successful partnership of gymnast and coach, the source added, when San Jose went to Tokyo to spend more time with Yulo while he was training there.
“This girlfriend became a distraction that drove a wedge between coach Mune (Kugimiya’s nickname) and Caloy,” the source said.
The source said Yulo apparently resented Kugimiya meddling into his love life that he decided to cut ties with the Japanese tactician as early as the Asian championships in Singapore last June.
“Because coach Mune is a gentleman, he did not want to make these things public. But now you see the outcome,” said the source, adding that Kugimiya is willing to take the prodigal athlete back in a bid to salvage his “shattered” career.
Scheduled to compete in the women’s individual all-around qualifiers yesterday were Filipino-Americans Aleah Finnegan and Kylee Kvamme.
