Yulo back with a vengeance

MANILA, Philippines — Caloy Yulo is on track to slay the ghost of the Tokyo Olympics where he failed to bag a medal and will go for podium finishes in three events at the 50th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Kitakyushu, Japan, this weekend.

In the qualifiers last Wednesday, Yulo topped a field of 102 competitors in the floor exercise and an army of 96 in parallel bars to barge into the finals of both apparatus in pole position. He also made it to the vault final, finishing third of 47 in the qualifiers.

There are eight qualifiers in each event with the floor final set tomorrow afternoon, the vault final on Sunday afternoon and the parallel bars final on Sunday night. There will be a one-hour break between the vault and parallel bars finals. Yulo decided to focus on floor, vault and parallel bars, withdrawing from attempting to qualify for the rings, horizontal bar and pommel horse finals.

Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carrion, who is in Kitakyushu, said Yulo isn’t contending for the individual all-around title anyway so he preserved himself for the three events.

“We want gold in floor and parallel bars and a silver or bronze in vault, nothing less,” said Carrion. “He worked on the parallel bars since a year ago, hoping to reach a score of 15.00 as he was already almost there with 14.500. I watched all the qualifying events from 9:20 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Caloy came in at 7 p.m. I sat there with a notebook, writing my observations and reporting to coach Mune (Kugimiya).”

Yulo, 21, said he will try his best to land a podium finish in each event. Kugimiya said he’ll do it. “I wanted to step up my game,” said Yulo after the qualifiers. “I didn’t want to make the same mistakes (as in the Olympics).”

Yulo’s form was a far cry from what he showed in Tokyo. In the floor exercise, he was the only contestant to breach 15.00, scoring 15.166 with marks of 6.6 in difficulty and 8.566 in execution. In parallel bars, he registered 15.565 on 6.4 in difficulty and 9.166 in execution. In vault, he averaged 14.808 and his execution score of 9.283 was the second highest in the second round.

“Caloy’s execution in the floor exercise was perfect with his triple forward and double backflip,” said Carrion. “What he’ll still work on for the Paris Olympics is the triple backflip and double forward, the most difficult of all and no one has done. In vault, Nazar Chepurnyi of Ukraine had an amazing landing and took first but I hope Caloy does better in the final. Some international officials came up to me to say how phenomenal Caloy is and that he’ll peak at 25.”