BACK-TO-BACK world gymnastics champion Carlos Edriel Yulo is poised to stamp his class anew in the Vietnam Southeast Asian Games, and could bring home more gold than he did in the Philippine Games three years ago, according to gymnastics chief Cynthia Carrion.
“I am counting on Caloy winning four golds, but coach Mune (Munehiro Kugimiya, the Japanese coach of the national team) said he could win ore,” Carrion said, assessing how the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines protégé would perform in his second SEA Games outing.
In his grand debut in the regional sports showcase at the historic Rizal Coliseum, Yulo romped off with the men’s all-around and floor exercise mints and silvers in the pommel horse, vault, rings, parallel bars, and uneven bars.
His prolific performance propelled him to becoming the country’s most bemedaled athlete in the 30th SEA Games, which Carrion said the diminutive dynamo could surpass when the Vietnam gymnastics competitions unfolds on May 13 at the Quan Ngua Sports Palace in Hanoi.
Aside from the all-around and the floor exercise, where the gymnast won a breakthrough gold medal in the 2019 FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, Yulo is also tipped to rule the vault and parallel bars.
After being eliminated in the men’s floor exercise, the Tokyo Olympic Games veteran bounced back strong to clinch the men’s vault gold and picked up a silver in the parallel bars in the 40th edition of the world meet in Kitakyushu, Japan last October.
The Tokyo-based athlete will banner the national artistic gymnastics squad composed of six men and six women entries.
