TOKYO-BASED men’s world vault champion Carlos Edriel Yulo will miss the Christmas holidays in Manila for the second straight year due to the presence of the COVID-19 Omicron variant in Japan.
“Caloy would be forced to quarantine for 14 days should he come here due to the Omicron variant in Japan and that would severely disrupt his training. He won’t be spending Christmas with his family again,” gymnastics chief Cynthia Carrion said.
The diminutive gymnast also missed spending Christmas last year with his family at the height of the pandemic in the Philippines.
It would have been a grand homecoming for the gymnast, who bounced back from his dismal Olympic outing in the last Tokyo Olympics by winning the gold in the men’s vault and silver in the parallel bars of the 40th FIG Artistic Gymnastic World Championships in the Japanese city of Kitakyushu last October.
Carrion had planned for Yulo’s arrival to coincide with the inauguration of the new Gymnastics Association of the Philippines national training center in Intramuros, which has now been pushed to Jan. 29, 2022 when the gymnast, hopefully, would be back in the country.
In his latest outing, Yulo carried the colors of his school, Teikyo University, which finished sixth overall over the weekend at the last All-Japan Senior Team Championships.
