YULO SEEKS REDEMPTION IN VAULT
TOkyo—carlos Yulo returns to the Ariake Gymnastics Center on Monday night for the finals of the men’s vault in artistic gymnastics.
His mission? To seek redemption after crashing out of his pet floor exercise in the qualifying round more than a week ago at the Tokyo Olympics.
“Hopefully he is more relaxed this time,” Gymastics Association of the Philippines President Cynthia Carrion Norton said on Sunday. “But watching all the great gymnast from all over the world could be intimidating.”
Yulo scored 14.733 points to land in sixth place in vault—the top eight participants advanced to the finals—nine days ago in the qualifying where, unfortunately, he landed in 44th place out of 64 competitors in the floor exercise.
The 2019 floor exercise world champion also fared poorly in rings (24th), parallel bars (55th), horizontal bar (63rd) and pommel horse (69th).
South Korea’s Shin Jeahwan is marching to the finals set at close to 7 p.m. (Tokyo time) as the top qualifier with 14.866 points, followed by Armenia’s Artur Davytan with 14.866 and Russian Olympic Committee top bet Nikita Nagorny with 14.783.
Nagorny added the Tokyo Olympics men’s team gold medal to the ROC’S collection earlier last week.
Rounding out the eight qualifiers were Brazil’s Caiou Sauza (14.700), Turkey’s Ahmet Onder (14.466), Hongkong’s Shek Wai Hung (14.274) and Spain’s Nicolau Mir (14.133).
Carrion Norton said Yulo’s coach Munehiro Kugimiya picked Shin and Onder as favorites in the event, but hinted Yulo could have a shot at a medal.
“According to Coach Mune [Kugimiya], the two top vault athetes are Korea and Turkey with difficulty of 6.02,” Carrion Norton said. “Caloy’s difficulty is 5.60. If Shin and Onder earn deductions and Caloy makes a perfect score, we have good chance.”
Carrion Norton didn’t say if Yulo was bitten by the so-called “twisties,” which struck even the sensational Simone Biles of the US.
The Associated Press described in a report “twisties” as the sudden inability for a gymnast to make the requisite spins—or sometimes any spins—for a particular maneuver.