CARLOS Yulo snatched a pair of medals that he wished were gold against top-notch competition Sunday that concluded his 51st FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships campaign in Liverpool, England mired with howlers and heartbreakers.
The Asian champion from Leveriza, Manila settled for the silver with an average of 14.950 in the vault event topped by Armenian Arthur Davtyan with a scintillating 15.050.
Mr. Yulo then snared a bronze with a 15.366 in the parallel bars that has stiffer rivals in reigning Olympic champion Zou Jingyuan of China and German champion Lukas Dauser who took the mint and silver with a pair of master class performances.
Mr. Dauser had a 15.500 while the mighty Mr. Zou bedazzled everyone with a mind-blowing 16.166 to reign supreme.
While it was not the turnout the Hanoi Southeast Games quintuple gold winner would have wanted, it was better than the day before when he had a catastrophic seventh-place finish in the event he was heavily favored to win — the floor exercise.
And a silver lining, Mr. Yulo completed his new but more difficult routine he prepared for vault.
“I wasn’t really expecting anything from parallel bars because my score was really low,” said Mr. Yulo during an early Monday morning online briefing. “I was really happy in vault even though I was only second because my routine was really new and I managed to pull it off.”
“It really gave me confidence somehow,” he added.
He also had a career-best eighth-place finish in the individual all-around Saturday that made up for all the painful, morale zapping miscues.
“I was disappointed and at the same time I learned so many lessons here. I guess this is part of the journey,” he said.
And there would be more chances for redemption for Mr. Yulo as he is scheduled to compete in at least four more World Championships next year — Cottbus, Germany from Feb. 23 to 26, Doha, Qatar from March 1 to 4, Baku, Aazerbaijan from March 9 to 12 and Cairo, Egypt from April 27 to 30.
Interestingly, there would be no room for errors in the four tilts as it will serve as qualifying meets for the battle of all battles — the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Nothing to be disappointed about, it happens,” said Mr. Yulo’s Japanese coach Munehiro Kugimiya.
“We focus on next year where we cannot make mistakes because of (Paris) Olympic qualification.” — Joey Villar
