NAGOYA – It’s not just two golds.
For gymnastics wonder Carlos Yulo, his 20th Asian Games golden double means so many things.
It’s homecoming. It’s redemption. It’s a rescue. It’s brotherhood. It’s tribute. And it’s a teaser.
HOMECOMING: The 4-foot-11 dynamo from Leveriza, Manila trained in Japan under a JOC scholarship, speaks Japanese, and knows the conbini route to the gym better than most Japanese juniors.
He added the Asiad golds – floor exercise and vault – to his trophy cabinet in a twin-kill made in Japan. And he won it in front of the second home crowd that raised him.
REDEMPTION: It was a great turnaround from his seventh-place showing in Jakarta in 2018.
“It’s like winning Olympics,” Yulo said, elevated by redemption that slew the ghost of his Asiad debut disappointment.
With this, Yulo completed the golden set – Olympic golds in Paris 2024, World golds, SEA Games, Asian Championship, and now Asian Games.
“Even though my goal is to get a gold medal, the process to get the gold medal is really, really crazy,” he said.
Crazy because two days before in vault qualification, he slipped. Most would dial down. He dialed up to 5.6 difficulty in the final and stuck it.
RESCUE: By Friday, the Philippines had two gold medals, one silver and four bronzes, breaking into the Top 15 of the medal race.
His golden feats paved the way for the singing of the national anthem with the flag being raised.
Through Thursday, the best Team Phl could get was silver from MMA fighter Jean Claude Saclag. Phl officials are hopeful Yulo’s golden double will open the floodgates for the stream of more gold.
BROTHERHOOD: While the elder Yulo was collecting his second gold, 18-year-old Karl Eldrew Yulo was preparing for horizontal bar. The kid won bronze – his first senior medal in his Asian Games debut.
TRIBUTE: Gymnastics Association of the Philippines president Cynthia Carrion has been Yulo’s guiding light but couldn’t be with King Carlos in this Asiad campaign.
She had to cut short her presence here after her husband died on Monday due to cancer. She stayed long enough to see the team qualify. She left before the golds.
But Carlos’ flag-raisings were as much for her.
TEASER: And then, the fourth place in parallel bars.
After back-to-back golds, Yulo could not replicate his finishes in his final competition, finishing fourth in parallel bars with 14.300 anchored on 5.6 in difficulty and 8.7 in execution.
China’s Zou Jingyuan set the tone with 15.500, Japan’s Shinnosuke Oka 14.500, and Uzbekistan’s Rasuljon Abdurakhimov 14.433.
But Yulo’s fourth is not failure. It’s the blueprint. The gap is four-tenths in difficulty and one held handstand.
Yulo has said he eyes two more Olympic stints, but wants to outdo himself – not just as floor and vault king, but as an all-around threat. He leaves Nagoya with two golds and one number in his head – 14.300.
Surely, Nagoya isn’t an ending.