OLYMPIC medal hopeful Carlos Edriel Yulo still has a lot left in his bag of tricks that he intends to unleash as he swings into action today in the men’s individual all-around finals at the Bercy Arena in Paris, France, according to gymnastics chief Cynthia Carrion.
“The objective was for Carlos to get into the finals, and now he is in the individual all-around, floor and vault. He will be raising his level of difficulty, especially in the last two events,” Carrion said in a television interview after the ace gymnast did superbly in the all-around qualifiers over the weekend.
“But Caloy has to make it perfect to win the gold,” added the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president of what the diminutive Filipino dynamo needs to slay the ghosts of his Tokyo Olympic Games performance three years ago.
Tipped as the favorite in the floor exercise in the Japanese capital, Yulo had a faulty routine and failed to qualify for the finals while finishing fourth in the vault.
Given three cracks at a medal, Yulo, 24, is keen on redeeming himself from his dismal stint in Tokyo.
“Medyo nag-play safe po ako sa qualifying para makapasok sa finals. May couple of mistakes po, hindi lang halata,” he said of last weekend’s outing. “Pero pagdating sa finals, bakbakan na po talaga.”
Yulo will join 23 other finalists led by defending Olympic champion Hashimoto Daiki, who led Japan to the team all-around gold last Monday, in the competition that starts at 5:30 p.m. (11:30 p.m. in Manila).
The all-around championship is expected to be a showdown among the Chinese and Japanese aces with Fil-British bet Jake Jarman as a dark horse.
Daiki Hashimoto has a shot at becoming the third Japanese to win back-to-back in the event.
Sawao Kato achieved the feat in 1968 and 1972, then Kohei Uchimura replicated it in 2012 and 2016.
Shinnosuke Oka is another Japanese contender in the all-events topped by Boheng Zhang of China in the qualifying, with compatriot Ruoteng Xiao coming at fourth.
Also in the mix in the finals are Great Britain’s Joe Fraser, Ukraine’s Oleg Verniaiev and Illia Kovtun, Italians Yumin Abbadini and Mario Macchiati, Americans Frederick Richard and Paul Juda, Swiss Matteo Giubellini and Florian Langenegger, Hungarian Krisztofer Meszaros, Australia’s Jesse Moore, the Netherland’s Casimir Schmidt and Frank Rijken, Kazakh Milad Karimi, Brazil’s Diogo Soares, Canada’s Felix Dolci and Rene Cournoyer, and Germany’s Nils Dunkel.
Zhang had a qualifying score of 88.597 as against Yulo’s 83.631. Oka scored 86.865, Hashimoto 85.064, Xiao 84.898 and Jarman 84.897.
