Yulo makes finals of all events in 51st World Artistic Gymnastics Championships 

MANILA, Philippines – Filipino dynamo Caloy Yulo knew before he left for the 51st World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool, England that he would give it all to excel in four events — floor exercise, vault, parallel bars and the individual all-around.

He was on target Tuesday.

Ranged against the best and brightest the sport could offer, the pocket-sized wonder from Leveriza, Manila allowed his star to shine in magnificence, advancing to the finals of the four disciplines he originally set out for while setting in motion his bid for more glory.

“It’s a really good result but it’s just the qualifying. I’m not being boastful, it’s not the final yet so if I can do it in the final maybe I will say I’m satisfied,” said Yulo.

The quintuple Southeast Asian Games gold winner was nothing less than electric in the floor exercise, his favorite of all apparatuses, where he blew away the competition in the qualifying round with a breathtaking score of 15.266 — the only score that breached the 15-point plateau.

Yulo was second in vault (14.849), fourth in parallel bars (15.300) and a pleasantly surprising third in the individual all-around finals (84.644) where he also earned a chance to medal.

He had an awkward start after an 11.666 in pommel horse, his Achilles’s heel that landed him at 102nd place, while he had a 13.533 (31st) in high bar and 14.066 (10th) in still rings, good enough to propel him to the first group of the individual all-around for the first time.

Only the Japanese duo of Watary Tanigawa (84.731) and Tokyo Olympic champion Daisuke Hashimoto (84.665) were better.

And he hopes to pull off the shocker of shockers and pull the rug from under the two titans of the sport.

“Of course, I would like to beat them. This is the first time I’m going to be in the first group and it is a big, big achievement for me,” he said.
It was in the floor exercise where Yulo performed his routine—2.5 twist to front double pike, double layout, double full out, front layout to Randi, triple full side pass, 1.5 to front double full, and a 3.5 twist—to near perfection.

And there is hope Yulo could replicate his golden effort in Stuttgart, Germany in 2019 and bury the ghost of his painful past a year ago when he had a catastrophic fifth-place finish in Kitakyushu.

“I’m going to try to beat what I did today (yesterdat), to be more aggressive,” said Yulo, who had a vault gold and a parallel bars silver in Kitakyushu.