MANILA, Philippines – After spearheading the country’s four-gold medal haul in the Phnom Penh Southeast Asian Games, Carlos Yulo set his sights at the Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships slated June 10-18 in Singapore where he hopes to earn his World Championship spot.
Yulo scooped up a pair of mints in the individual all-around and parallel bars and the same number of silver in the still rings and team event to power the country to a four-gold harvest in the sport.
But a bigger battle looms for the pocket-sized wonder from Leveriza in Manila as he is out to secure his place in the Worlds set September 29 to October 8 in Antwerp, Belgium, where he would also gun for a precious slot to next year’s Paris Olympics.
“Carlos is back in Tokyo, Japan for training for the Asian Championships,” Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carrion Norton yesterday told The STAR.
And Yulo has gotten bolder as he aims to qualify not just in his favorite individual apparatuses like floor exercise, vault and parallel bars among others but also in the individual all-around event.
“Carlos will try to qualify in the individual all-around for the World Championships and Olympics as well,” said Carrion Norton.
Because of the Antwerp meet, Yulo has decided to skip the Hangzhou Asian Games, which would run smack into the former since the latter is scheduled September 23 to October 8.
It is Antwerp where Yulo’s berth to the Olympics would be decided as the 23-year-old two-time world and three-time Asian champion shoots for the one piece of hardware missing in his vast collection — an Olympic gold.