Caloy takes bronze in parallel bars
All-Japan Apparatus tilt
CALOY Yulo, the first Filipino world gymnastics champion, produced a confidence-builder heading into the Tokyo Olympics by winning the bronze medal in the men’s parallel bars of the 75th All Japan Apparatus Championships over the weekend in Gunma, Japan.
With 14.966, the 21-year old Yulo finished behind the Japanese pair of 2016 Rio Olympics gold medalist Yusuke Tanaka and Kaito Sugimoto, who each claimed the gold medal with identical scores of 15.400.
Delivering a degree of difficulty score of 6.400, Yulo tallied 8.566 for execution to settle for the runner-up honors.
As the Olympics draws closer, Yulo is trying his very best to level up his performance and meet his goals.
“What a blessing,” Yulo posted on his Instagram account with a heart emoji.
“Being able to play with the bests is already an achievement for me. It was a pretty good performance…but unfortunately, I didn’t reach my personal target score. I’ll definitely be using this experience to improve my skills for future events,” he added with a rock on emoji.
The Japan-based Yulo qualified for the Tokyo Games after advancing to the finals of the all-around in the World Artistic Gymnastics Championship in Stuttgart, Germany in 2019, winning the gold in the floor exercise.
Yulo returned to the Philippines later in the year to compete in the 30th Southeast Asian Games, where he won gold in the floor exercises and the all-around, while securing silver in the pommel horse, still rings, vault, horizontal bar and parallel bar.
Training extensively in Japan for the past years under Japanese coach Munehiro Kugimiya, Yulo is one of the country’s biggest gold medal hopes in the Tokyo Games.
