CARLOS “CALOY” YULO has qualified himself for the world championships in Belgium later this year following his three gold medals from the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) World Cup Apparatus Series—two he won in Baku over the weekend and one in Doha a week ago.
“I’m very blessed to have this kind of experience in these competitions,” Yulo told BusinessMirror on Monday. “I’m so thankful to God for helping me improve in every competition.”
The four-leg series are qualifiers for the world championships and with Yulo securing a gold medal each in floor exercise, vault and parallel bars, he’s guaranteed to vie in the September 29 to October 8 Antwerp tournament where berths to next year’s Paris Olympics are at stake.
The Tokyo Olympian and former world champion in floor exercise and vault also has one silver and three bronze medals from the first three legs so far of the series.
He’s No. 2 in parallel bars with 75 points and No. 3 with 55 points in vault and floor exercise with 30 points, based on an unofficial but confirmed ranking in the series.
Yulo, however, has only 22 points to rank No. 11 in the rings.
The top eight gymnasts in each apparatus will advance to the world championships.
“I’m thankful to coach Mune [Munehiro Kugiyama] for being a super hardworking coach,” said Yulo, who’s bound for Manila for a brief break before he heads to Cairo for the fourth and final leg set from April 27 to 30.
Yulo won the floor exercise gold medal in the Doha second leg and ruled the vault and parallel bars—his first in his career—just over the weekend in the Azerbaijan capital.
He got silver and bronze in the bars in the Cottbus first leg and Doha, where he also clinched a vault bronze medal.
Gymnastics Association of the Philippines (GAP) president Cynthia Carrion-Norton told BusinessMirror that Yulo would get the opportunity to observe his potential world championships and Paris Olympics opponents at the Cairo final leg.
“In Cairo, we expect to just study Caloy’s opponents. If we wins, that’s good, but not necessary as we are qualified already. No pressure on him,” Carrion-Norton said.
The FIG, meanwhile, described the 23-year-old Yulo’s performance in Baku as his “usual impeccable form.”
It was in his victory in parallel bars that ended Ukrainian Illia Kovtun’s streak of six world cup titles in the apparatus.
“The difference was slight on parallel bars with Yulo’s 15.400 just beating Kovtun’s 15.366 after both turned in excellent routines,” the FIG said in its web site.
The FIG furthered that Yulo’s only visible error in vault was a small hop forward on landing and that he stood up a Lopez (Kasamatsu double twist).
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