CARLOS Edriel Yulo will have a five-day training camp in the French capital of Paris before plunging into action in the 41st FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships from Oct. 29 to Nov. 6 in Liverpool, England.
“Caloy will be in Paris for a training camp from Oct. 19 to 24 before heading for the World Championships at the end of the month,” Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carrion said.
“This will be a good opportunity for Caloy to likewise test the conditions for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, which I am confident he will be able to qualify,” said Carrion, adding that Yulo will be joined in Paris by Japanese coach Munehiro Kugimiya and physiotherapist Junpei Kono.
Philippine Olympic Committee President and Tagaytay city Mayor Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino said last week that he would look for venues where gymnastics, weightlifting and boxing could set up early training camps before the Paris Olympics.
Tolentino said this would be done during the course of his ocular inspection of the Olympic competition venues in Paris.
Yulo ruled the men’s floor exercise with a score of 15.05 points in the recent All-Japan Senior Championships but skipped the rest of the events due to a bad fall on the horizontal bar that resulted in a minor hand injury.
“Coach Mune (Kugimiya’s nickname) assured me that Caloy’s injury was minor and would be able to recover in time for the worlds,” added Carrion.
Based on her conversion with Kugimiya, Carrion said Yulo is being primed as top gold medal prospect in the floor, vault and difficult men’s all-around event in the 2024 Paris Games.
He has proven that he was what it takes to be highly competitive in all three events on the world stage.
The pint-sized phenom bagged his historic first gold at the world meet by topping the men’s floor exercise event in the 2019 edition in Stuttgart, Germany before following it up with a gold and silver, respectively, in the men’s vault and parallel bars in the next one held in Kitakyushu, Japan last year.
At the last Asian gymnastics championships in Doha, Qatar in June, Yulo scored 83.767 points to place a close second to China Shi Cong (83.833) in the men’s all-around event.
