(Eagle News) – Filipino gymnast Carlos Yulo narrowly missed winning a medal at the men’s vault finals at the Tokyo Olympics on Monday, Aug. 2 after finishing fourth.
The 21-year old Yulo scored 14.716, just .017 points from the third placer Arthur Davtyan of Armenia who scored 14.733.
Yulo had scored 14.716 in his first attempt after his landing where his right foot stepped off the mat to balance himself, a minor error that placed him fourth in vault 1.
For his second attempt, however, he performed a Dragulescu, an extremely difficult vault routine which involved a handspring double front somersault with a half turn, that gave him the highest score in vault 2 at 14.866. His score here was even higher than the score of gold medal winner Shin Jeahwan from South Korea in vault 2.
However, his performance at the second attempt was not enough for a podium finish when both his scores in the Vault 1 and 2 were counted.
He placed fourth after Armenia’s Davtyan who won the bronze. Denis Abliazin of Russia was second with a silver, and Shin Jeahwan from South Korea bagged the gold. Jeahwan won two golds on the vault at the 2020 World Cup circuit.
This is the first time, however, for Yulo to complete in the vault finals in a world competition. His forte was in the floor exercises after winning the gold at the 2019 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, becoming the first-ever Filipino and first male Southeast Asian to win at the world championships.
Yulo, however, failed to make it to the floor exercise finals in the Olympics after placing 44th out of 64 gymnasts in the preliminaries.
The Filipino gymnast still made the Philippines proud as he tied at fourth place in the vault finals, along with Russian gymnast Nikita Nagornyy who was the 2019 World All-Around Champion and the 2020 Olympic and 2018 World All-Around bronze medalist. Nagornyy was also an eight-time European gold medalist and a three-time Youth Olympic champion.
The Tokyo Olympics is Yulo’s first Olympic stint. This is also the first time that a gymnast from the Philippines entered the Olympics.
(Eagle News Service)