TOKYO. – Carlos Yulo vies in the men’s vault finals of artistic gymnastics on Monday night, hoping to redeem himself from a disappointing performance in the floor exercise more than a week ago.
Yulo scored 14.733 points to land in sixth place in the vault, making it among the top advancing to the finals.
A world champion in the floor exercise in 2019, Yulo finished 44th out of 64 competitors in his pet event. He also fared poorly in rings (24th), parallel bars (55th), horizontal bar (63rd), and pommel horse (69th).
“Hopefully, he is more relaxed this time,” Gymnastics Association of the Philippines President Cynthia Carrion Norton said on Sunday. “But watching all the great gymnasts from all over the world could be intimidating.”
South Korea’s Shin Jeahwan will go into the finals set at close to 7 p.m. (Tokyo time) as the top qualifier with 14.866 points, followed by Armenia’s Artur Davytan with 14.866 and Russian Olympic Committee top bet Nikita Nagorny with 14.783.
Nagorny was a member of the ROC team that won the men’s team gold medal last week.
Rounding out the eight qualifiers are Brazil’s Caiou Sauza (14.700), Turkey’s Ahmet Onder (14.466), Hongkong’s Shek Wai Hung (14.274), and Spain’s Nicolau Mir (14.133).
Norton said Yulo’s coach, Munehiro Kugimiya, picked Shin and Onder as favorites in the event but hinted Yulo could have a shot at a medal.
“According to Coach Mune, the two top vault athletes are (from) Korea and Turkey with a difficulty of 6.02,” Norton said. “Caloy’s difficulty is 5.60. If Shin and Onder earn deductions and Caloy makes a perfect score, we have a good chance.”
Carrion Norton didn’t say if Yulo was bitten by the so-called “twisties,” which struck even the sensational Simone Biles, the top gymnast of the United States.
The Associated Press described “twisties” as the sudden inability of a gymnast to make the requisite spins–or sometimes any spins–for a particular maneuver.
