PARIS Olympic Games double gold medalist Carlos Edriel Yulo capped his campaign in the 14th Asian Senior Artistic Gymnastics Championships on a sub-par note yesterday, mustering a pair of bronze medals at the close of the meet at the Jecheon Gymnasium in Jecheon, South Korea.
Competing in the two events he handily ruled in the 2024 edition in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Yulo, 25, could only score 14.333 points in the men’s vault and 14.166 in the parallel bars.
The vault gold was secured by unheralded Iranian Madi Olfati, who topped the event with a score of 14.500. He finished eighth in the same event that Yulo won in the French capital with an impressive score of 15.166 points.
As the fourth athlete to perform, the Pinoy sports hero had a brief stint at the top in the men’s parallel bars until the Japanese pair of Oka Shinnosuke and Tsunogai Tomoharu subsequently overtook him.
A Paris Olympic triple medalist, Shinnosuke, a former training partner of Yulo at the same gym in Tokyo who copped the prestigious Asian individual all-around title last week, took the parallel bars mint with a score of 14.700. Tomoharu settled for the silver (14.66).
A bronze medalist in the individual all-around (14.433) last week, the pint-sized Pinoy gymnastic star’s lone gold was in the floor exercise with a tally of 14.600 points, barely edging Kazakh Milad Karimi, who settled for silver (14.400).
Under national coach Aldrin Castaneda, his performance was a far cry from his dominant outing in the previous edition, where he romped off with mints in the individual all-around, floor exercise, vault and parallel bars.
This also paled in comparison to the Asian meet in Singapore two years ago where he carted away mints in the floor exercise, parallel bars and vault, on top of a silver in the individual all-around. This was the last time that the athlete and Japanese coach Munehiro Kugimiya partnered together.
Yulo’s younger sibling, Karl Eldrew, also had a vault silver in the Asian junior meet with a score of 13.850 points.
