Carlos Yulo sacrifices Christmas with family to focus on Olympic gold
MANILA, Philippines — Tokyo-bound Carlos Yulo is making sure he will not be distracted from his main goal of delivering the country’s first Olympic gold medal in Tokyo next year.
That is the reason the pocket-sized, 20-year-old world champion gymnast is sacrificing spending Christmas with his family back home to stay focused on his training in Japan.
“Caloy wanted to come home for Christmas and I felt so bad to refuse him as this is the most focused he should be to win the gold medal in the Olympics,” Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carrion-Norton yesterday told The STAR.
Carrion-Norton said Yulo is now the early stage of his preparation towards Tokyo where he hopes to make a historic breakthrough.
“We have seven more months of focused training,” she said.
Yulo is now No. 1 in floor exercise in the recent world rankings and is aiming to be No. 2 in vault.
And the Leveriza, Manila native is just peaking at the right time after he copped a pair of bronze medals in floor exercise and vault in the 74th All-Japan Championships a week ago.
It was an improvement from a mere bronze medal effort the 74th All-Japan Championships last September.
Monitor major updates as we follow developments in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
Sprint legend Usain Bolt says he could have emerged from retirement to win a fourth straight Olympic 100m title in Tokyo this year, insisting the winning time was within his reach.
Bolt, 35, tells AFP that it was frustrating to watch the delayed 2020 Games from his home in Jamaica as his male countrymen flopped and Italy's Lamont Jacobs claimed a shock victory.
"I really missed it. I was like, I wish I was there," he says in an interview at the Dubai offices of his sponsor PepsiCo on Sunday.
"Because for me, I live for those moments. So it was hard to watch." — AFP
US broadcaster NBC says its Olympics coverage garnered strong ratings on television and streaming despite declines from viewership in prior years.
The NBCUniversal unit says the average television audience for the Tokyo games was 15.1 million. The figure was below that of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
The media group says the Tokyo event was "the most streamed Olympics ever" with some six billion streaming minutes and 2.9 billion impressions on NBC's Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. — AFP
Tokyo awakes to a huge bill and soaring coronavirus cases on Monday after pulling off a mid-pandemic Olympics that at times looked impossible and had a mixed reception to the end.
Olympic officials have been predictably bullish, saying the Games offered hope and uplifting moments, and went off without any major coronavirus outbreaks.
"These Olympic Games have been a powerful demonstration of the unifying power of sport," International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach says at his closing press conference. — AFP/Sara Hussein
Greece's Olympic Games water polo team on Sunday said it would donate half the prize money they will receive from Olympiakos football team owner Vangelis Marinakis to wildfire victims throughout the country.
"We want to thank Mr Marinakis from the bottom of our hearts for his generous move. We consider it our duty to help by donating half of the amount to the wildfire victims," team captain Giannis Foundoulis announced in a statement released by the Greek Olympic Committee.
Greece lost the Olympic Games water polo final in Tokyo to Serbia.
Marinakis said he would award the team with 200,000 euros, an announcement from Olympiakos said. — AFP
Ukraine's Khyziak flattened by Brazil's Sousa in just a minute for the middleweight gold.
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