CARLOS YULO was in his elements on Wednesday night to advance to the medal round of the men’s floor exercise, parallel bars and vault at the 50th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships at the General Gymnasium in Kitakyushu, Japan.
The Tokyo Olympian Yulo looked en route to retaining the floor exercise gold medal he won in Stuttgart two years ago by tallying a front-running 15.166 points. Italy’s Nicola Bartoloni and Japanese Kazuki Minami ranked second and third, respectively, with similar 14.966 points.
Yulo, 21, also led the parallel bars with 15.566 points, with Chinese Boheng Zhang (15.300) and Xuwei Hu (15.233) trailing at second and third, respectively.
He was third in the vault with 14.808 points behind joint leaders Nazar Chepurnyi (14.833) of Ukraine and Hakseon Yang (14.833) of South Korea.
“I feel all of this competition will be revenge, all of it,” Yulo told the International Gymnastics Federation website on Wednesday. “This is like the Olympics. Every competition—big or small—I am going to treat like it’s the Olympics.”
“I wanted to step up my game and I don’t want to make the same mistakes [again],” he said.
Yulo was a favorite in Tokyo but found the glare of being an Olympic first-timer pressing down on his performance. He didn’t advance to the floor exercise medal round and missed the podium of the vault at fourth place.