Undeterred after bronze, Yulo sets sights on vault gold
Carlos Yulo didn’t have his best day on the mat. But in the grand arena of world gymnastics, the Filipino star knows when to leave a stumble behind and leap toward a new opportunity.
The 25-year-old Olympian settled for bronze in the men’s floor exercise at the 53rd FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Jakarta on Friday, scoring 14.533. The routine was a step down from his golden standard—he ruled the same event at the Paris Olympics and in Stuttgart back in 2019—but it wasn’t a step back.
“There’s still the vault finals and I aim to do better than today,” Yulo said, his gaze already fixed on the next challenge.
And that next challenge could be golden.
Yulo enters Saturday’s vault finals as the top qualifier, his 14.750 score putting him ahead of a strong field. The event, which he won in the 2021 world championships in Kitakyushu, remains one of his strongest and most explosive disciplines.
On Friday, Yulo’s floor exercise lacked the same verve he brought to Paris, where he dazzled with a 15.000-point routine. Performing second in the lineup, he briefly held the lead after American Kameron Nelson opened with 14.133. But Yulo’s mark was quickly surpassed by Britain’s Luke Whitehouse (14.666) and Jake Jarman (14.866), who took silver and gold, respectively.
“I have no regrets,” Yulo said. “I did my best and gave my all, but Jarman and Luke just happened to be better today.”
In a sport where tenths of a point make the difference, Yulo was penalized 0.333—ironically, the exact margin that separated him from Jarman’s winning score.
But none of that seemed to bother Yulo for long. His poise and maturity, shaped by seven straight world championship appearances since 2018, showed through in the way he processed the result.
The pocket gymnastics rocket is expected to deliver a strong performance in vault, where he will be the man to beat.
