CARLOS Yulo has always looked up to six-time world and two-time Olympic men’s all-around champion Kohei Uchimura of Japan.
Yulo gets the golden opportunity to emulate his Japanese role model when he competes in the men’s all-around final of the 51st FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships today at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England.
After a strong third-place finish in the men’s all-around qualifiers last Monday, the tiny Pinoy twister will be among the athletes to watch when he steps on the floor at 6 p.m. with the rest of the 24 finalists.
He will be up against Japan’s Wataru Tanigawa and Tokyo Olympics men’s all-around gold medalist Daiki Hashimoto, who finished 1-2 in the qualifiers. All three of them will also have to contend with defending champion Zhang Boheng.
Fifth in the qualifiers, Zhang will enter the all-around finals recharged after anchoring the Chinese squad to the men’s team gold medal last Wednesday (early yesterday morning in Manila) and a spot in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games with a top score of 257.858 points.
Japan, which topped the men’s team qualifying round, took the silver (253.395) while host Great Britain bagged the bronze medal (247.229), rounding out the top men’s three squads that booked tickets to the Paris Olympics.
Ominously, Zhang, a silver medalist in the men’s all-around in last year’s Tokyo Olympiad, scored a combined total of 86.130 points from the six events, better than his individual qualifying score of 83.766 points.
This ought to keep Tanigawa, Hashimoto and Yulo, who scored 84.731, 84.665 and 84.664, respectively, in the qualifying stage, on their toes as they bid for a podium finish in the rigorous and challenging event.
The Filipino 2019 world floor exercise champion got a good break as he opens with his pet event in the first rotation, followed by the pommel horse, rings, vault, and parallel bars, respectively, before winding up his stint with the horizontal bar.
