Eyes on Paris 2024: Two-time world champ Yulo perseveres over the years
MANILA, Philippines – Breakthrough world championships gold and silver medals by Filipino Carlos Edriel Yulo, in two apparatuses where he has yet to break ground globally, have jumpstarted his pursuit of Olympic vengeance.
His sights? The Games of the 33rd Olympiad in Paris, 2024.
Silver medalist Japan's Hidenobu Yonekura, gold medalist Carlos Edriel Yulo of the Philippines and bronze medalist Israel's Andrey Medvedev pose during the medal ceremony for vault event at the men's apparatus finals during the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships at the Kitakyushu City Gymnasium in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka prefecture on October 24, 2021. Charly Triballeau/AFPA gold in the vault and a silver in the parallel bars gave Yulo surprising medal hauls at this year’s World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Kitakyushu, Japan. These medals atoned for his fifth place finish in the floor exercise, which gave Yulo a 2019 gold medal and a 2018 bronze.
Yulo’s feats in Kitakyushu came two months after the Tokyo Olympic Games. There, Yulo stumbled in the floor exercise (44th) but he almost snatched a medal in the vault (fourth).
The key to Yulo’s unexpected gold medal in the vault was to improve on his execution (or E) score, especially since he has maintained a degree of difficulty (D score) of 5.600 since the 2018 world championships.
As for the parallel bars final, what changed for the Filipino since 2018 is making a leap of faith in his D score: from 5.700 in Tokyo to 6.400 in Kitakyushu. Yulo’s score in the final (15.300) was even lower than his first-ranking qualification round score of 15.566.
Since first competing globally at the 2018 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Doha, Qatar, Yulo has been banking on three pet apparatuses — the floor exercises, vault and parallel bars — to perform creditably as an all-around gymnast.
Dreaming to top the all-around event
Being the world’s best all-around gymnast is Yulo’s dream. He wants to be like Russia’s Artur Dalaloyan and Nikita Nagornyy, the 2018 and 2019 World Championships all-around gold medalists, respectively; be like the new Olympic all-around champion Daiki Hashimoto of Japan; and be like the new world all-around champion, Zhang Boheng of China.
Yulo wants to be like his idol K?hei Uchimura, the two-time Olympic champion and three-time world champion in the individual all-around.
Competing in the all-around events sees a gymnast perform the floor exercise, the pommel horse, the rings, the vault, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar in a single day. A gymnast qualifies in an individual apparatus’ final round if she or he lands in the top 24 (for the Olympic Games, landing in the top eight) during the all-around qualification stage.
During the qualification rounds in Kitakyushu, Yulo decided to skip the individual all-around and concentrate on his three pet apparatuses, especially the parallel bars as he told GymCastic. After the qualification round, Yulo topped all competitors in the floor exercises and surprisingly the parallel bars, as well as placed third in the vault.
Some foreign viewers of the Kitakyushu final on YouTube yesterday (October 24) actually wondered: Why did Yulo skip the all-around event?
It is because Southeast Asia’s greatest gymnast wanted to perform more difficult routines in the vault and parallel bars, while he has already gotten the clique of performing among the most difficult routines in the floor exercises.
Vaulting to the top
Since the 2018 World Championships, Yulo has sustained a difficulty score of 5.600 in the vault. He has actually landed an over-9.000 execution score as early as 2018 (for a 14.666 total), though Yulo faltered in the vault (13.100) during the all-around final in Doha.
The Tokyo Olympics was Yulo’s breakthrough for the vault, placing seventh in the qualification round and eventually finishing fourth in the final. In both rounds, Yulo earned an average of 9.166 E scores, though he got a 0.1 deduction in the finals when his right foot landed just outside the landing mat.
For both Tokyo and Kitakyushu, Yulo’s first vault saw him execute a Kasamatsu routine (named after International Hall of Famer Shigeru Kasamatsu of Japan). After his hands pounded on the vault, Yulo double twisted to his left and returned to the center of the line upon landing on the mat.
In Kitakyushu, Yulo landed with “only a small step back” but his Kasamatsu vault had “great form,” as annotated by the International Gymnast Magazine (IGM).
The Kasamatsu vault. Image from the website of Gym Drill ProYulo then performed the more difficult Dragulescu (named after Romanian and eight-time world gold medalist Marian Dragulescu) for his second vault. The Dragulescu is a handspring double somersault, with one’s legs tucked to the chest, and then making a ½ twist upon landing.
Yulo’s landing was almost perfect, with the smallest little hops (observes IGM). He then raised both arms to his side, clenching both hands in jubilation. He tabbed a 9.433 execution score on that Dragulescu vault, eventually giving him a 14.916 average and the gold medal.
The Dragulescu vault. Image from the website of the Code of Points(The International Gymnastics Federation names a routine after a gymnast who first performs it in a world competition, as recognized in the sport’s Code of Points.)
Big leap in the parallel bars
The parallel bars also saw Yulo make a big leap of faith in terms of his degree of difficulty. From performing a 5.700 degree of difficulty in Tokyo, Yulo leapfrogged to performing a 6.400 degree of difficulty.
IGM annotated that Yulo’s nearly one-minute routine started off with a peach to one bar, then making a Healy from one bar. What followed was a Makuts with an arch in the middle, another Healy, then a front toss, a Moi, a “well-done” Bhavsar, a Tippelt, then a Diamidov, and he dismounted with a double front half.
His landing was “stuck very clean,” IGM observed. Yulo registered a 15.300 score to place behind eventual gold medalist Hu Xiawei of China (15.433 score, employing a 6.600 degree of difficulty).
Though Yulo lost in the floor exercises final after getting a 0.3 deduction, his degree of difficulty in the floor — 6.600 — was the toughest during that final.
His 2019 gold medal feat in Stuttgart saw Yulo achieving an E score of 8.800 to back up his 6.500 D score. In both Tokyo and Kitakyushu, Yulo’s D score went up to 6.600 but he has yet to hit pay dirt.
Three apparatuses still needing improvement
Kitakyushu saw Yulo already peaking in these three apparatuses: already able to perhaps perform the highest D score in the floor exercises, among the highest D in the parallel bars, and vastly improving his E score in the vault. Given his qualification round scores in these apparatuses, Yulo could have easily made the individual all-around final.
However, Yulo remains off the pace in the pommel horse, rings and horizontal bar. In short, his D scores in those apparatuses remain off the pace compared to those of other top performers.
At the Doha World Championships’ all-around qualification round, Yulo ranked 52nd in the pommel horse, 41st in the rings and 162nd in the horizontal bar. The following year in Stuttgart, he ranked 92nd, 72nd and 82nd in the pommel horse, rings and horizontal bar, respectively.
And at the Tokyo Olympics, the Filipino landed 69th (pommel horse), 24th (rings) and 63rd (horizontal bar). For those three apparatuses since the 2018 World Championships, Yulo has yet to execute higher degrees of difficulty.
If Yulo wants to be the best individual all-around gymnast in Paris, he must have a balance of registering high marks in all six events.
In Kitakyushu, Zhang (87.981) slightly edged Olympic all-around champion Hashimoto (87.964). In the final (N=24 finalists), Zhang ranked first in the floor exercises (14.833), vault (14.866) and parallel bars (15.366); second in the rings and horizontal bar; and 12th in the pommel horse.
Interestingly, Zhang skipped the individual apparatus finals in the rings and parallel bars.
Not always a good routine day for a gymnast
But gymnastics is a sport where a gymnast will not always perform her or his routines well in major competitions. Yulo’s floor exercise deduction in the Kitakyushu final is an example; he even almost over-arched in his one-bar headstand during the parallel bars final; overarching could have meted Yulo a hefty deduction.
His Tokyo floor exercise qualification round performance was another, that outcome dampening him and the hopes of a Philippine nation wishing him to land gold in the floor.
If Yulo wants to land a medal in the all-around in Paris, he must have a balance of registering high marks in all six apparatuses. That balance means trying to attempt higher degrees of difficulty in all six apparatuses.
Southeast Asia’s greatest gymnast learned his lesson in Tokyo. He said in a September 8 quote card on Facebook: “It is important that all of my strategies are geared towards the competition itself. We have previous approaches that didn’t work for me.”
“Some might have worked for me, but it was not satisfying enough. I’m just really thinking about my next steps,” Yulo added.
Still a student at Teikyo University in Tokyo, Yulo trains under coach Munehiro Kugiyama. Now on their fourth year together, the tandem has produced two gold medals, a silver and a bronze in the World Championships.
At 24, come Paris 2024
As early as the 2019 Stuttgart World Championships, Kugiyama is awaiting Yulo’s “best age” that falls on the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
“His (Yulo’s) best age will be 24. So now, I must think about his body and mind, his education, to make a plan and follow it,” Kugiyama told the news website of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). At Paris, the Japanese mentor said Yulo “may be even better”.
After the curtains fell in Kitakyushu to end this year’s World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Yulo’s post-mortem statement saw him ache for more.
He told FIG: “I won the gold and it was another achievement for me in the parallel bars, but there’s always something more… I want to reach my full potential as a gymnast.”
The Filipino Connection is a regional partner of Philstar.com.
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