Yulo out to conquer the world in Liverpool

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TOP Filipino gymnast Carlos Edriel Yulo has made it publicly known that Kohei Uchimura is his role model and hopes to emulate the popular Japanese world and Olympic men’s all-around champion.

Yulo aims to achieve a new milestone as the world’s best all-around men’s gymnast in the 51st FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships on Oct. 29 to Nov. 6 in Liverpool, England.

To achieve overall superiority in the six apparatuses — floor exercise, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar — requires not only superb skills and talent but also a lot of mental toughness, according to Japanese men’s team head coach Hiroaki Sato.

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“I once asked Kohei what made him such a strong all-around champion and he told me that it was his mental toughness, of being able to train and practice daily even if you don’t want to,” said Sato, who has been Uchimura’s personal coach since 2016.

Relying not only on outstanding talent but also mental fortitude, Uchimura has won three Olympic gold medals in the men’s all-around, highlighted by anchoring the Japanese squad to the team and individual golds in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, on top of six world titles in the same event.

“The men’s all-around is the most important gold medal. You are the best of the best. (To win it) you need to be versatile and must have different types of abilities and skills. You need to be flexible and strong,” said the Japanese mentor, one of the instructors of the FIG Academy for Artistic Gymnastics-Level 2 course last week at the MVPSF Training Center in Intramuros.

Sato has been pleased at how Yulo’s career has blossomed since he started training in Tokyo in 2016 under his compatriot Munehiro Kugimiya, the Philippine men’s artistic gymnastics coach.

“I talked to Mune (Kugimiya’s nickname) while I was going to Manila a few weeks ago for the FIG Academy and he gave me some advice,” added the mentor, who, together with Uchimura, witnessed the start of Yulo’s training at the Japan National Training Center in Tokyo in 2016.

“I remember that Caloy (Yulo’s nickname) was still very shy at that time but still very focused. At that stage he could not really understand the environment. The first two years (in Tokyo) must have been very difficult. I saw him crying in the gym,” Sato recalled.

 

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