By KRISTEL SATUMBAGA
Carlos Yulo saw his three-year reign in vault and parallel bars come to an end after settling for bronze medals in the two apparatus in the 12th Senior Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships on Sunday, June 8, in Jecheon, South Korea.
The 25-year-old Yulo grabbed his first bronze in vault where he is also the reigning Olympic champion after scoring 14.333 points to finish behind eventual gold medalist Mahdi Olfati of Iran and silver winner Huang Mingqi of China.
Yulo registered 14.533 on his first vault but got only 14.133 on his second try, obviously not enough to overhaul the impressive performance of Olfati, who topped the qualifiers last Friday, June 6.
Olfati, a silver medalist at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games and only a seventh placer at the 2024 Paris Olympics, posted 14.500 for the gold medal while Huang registered 14.400 for the runner-up honors.
Yulo’s teammate, Southeast Asian Games gold medalist John Ivan Cruz, finished sixth among eight finalists with 14.150.
An hour later, Yulo returned to pick up his second bronze medal in parallel bars by scoring 14.166 behind the 1-2 finish of Japanese bets Oka Shinnosuke and Tomoharu Tsunogai.
Olympic champion Shinnosuke, who won the individual all-around a few days back, scored an impressive 14.700 while Tsunogai posted 14.466 for the silver.
So far, Yulo has four medals after winning the floor exercise gold on Saturday, June 7, and the individual all-around bronze on Friday.
He finished seventh in rings the day before.
Yulo is still to compete in the horizontal bar hopeful he can do better after qualifying last in the finals.
