MANILA – Denied a golden repeat in men’s floor exercise, Carlos Edriel Yulo came back with a gold in vault and a silver in parallel bars in the 2021 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships last night in Kitakyushu, Japan.
The 21-year-old Yulo was solid with his execution in the men’s vault finals with a score of 14.916 after two rounds, beating Hidenobu Yonekura of Japan (14.866) and Andrey Medvedev of Israel (14.649).
Yulo, who was the first to perform in the men’s vault finals, finished the signature vault in second place with 14.800 points (5.600 on difficulty and 9.200 on execution), behind Yonekura’s 15.000 points.
The Filipino gymnast, however, bounced back with a much cleaner execution in the Dragulescu with 15.033 points (5.600 on difficulty and 9.433 on execution) to secure his second world gymnastics gold.
This was Yulo’s first championship on vault after taking a bronze in the All-Japan Championships just the previous month and the silver at the 30th Southeast Asian Games.
The Manila City native, however, could not complete a double gold medal finish in the tournament. He settled for a silver medal in the parallel bars finals with 15.300 points.
Yulo was in the lead after six gymnasts before he was overtaken by Chinese Xuwei Hu, who had 15.466 points. Another Chinese bagged the bronze medal in Cong Shi (15.066).
It was still a sweet redemption for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games campaigner after failing to defend his gold medal in the men’s floor exercise finale on Saturday.
Yulo was unable to follow up his floor exercise success from 2019 as he landed at fifth place in the finale with 14.566 points after being deducted points for errors in his execution.
Finishing in front of Yulo were Nikola Bartolini of Italy with 14.800 points followed by Kazuki Minami of Japan with 14.766, Emil Soravuo of Finland with 14.700 and Korea’s Sunghyun Ryu with 14.600./PN
