PH’s top gymnast Carlos Yulo qualifies for Tokyo Olympics

FILE – Carlos Edriel Yulo competing in floor exercise during day nine of the gymnastics championships. —AFP

MANILA, Philippines— Carlos Edriel Yulo can now book a ticket to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The country’s top gymnast qualified in the global Summer Games after advancing to the finals of the men’s all-around event of the 49th FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany.

Yulo wound up 16th overall in the preliminary round out of the 20 Olympic qualifiers from 14 countries after compiling a total output of 82.164 points from the six apparatus in the MAG.

The 4-foot-11 dynamo will accompany pole vaulter EJ Obiena to Tokyo after the latter became the first Filipino qualifier by surpassing the Olympic standard in his event.

“Caloy performed beautifully and he is No.1 in the list in as much as Russia, China and Japan, which already qualified last year in Doha, Qatar,’’ said Cynthia Carrion, president of the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines.

“He had a lot of international exposure and trained in Japan for two years before going here,’’ added Carrion, also a board member of the Philippine Olympic Committee.

With Japanese Munehiro Kugimiya as his coach and heavily supported by the Philippine Sports Commission, Yulo scored 14.633 in the floor exercise, 12.466 in the pommel horse and 13.166 in the rings.

The 19-year-old from Leveriza, Pasay City who grew up watching the national gymnasts at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex registered14.433 in the vault and parallel bars and capped it off with 13.033 in the horizontal bar.

Russians Nikita Nagornyy and Artur Dalaloyan finished 1-2 in the preliminaries with 87.333 and 86.531 while Xiao Ruoteng wasn’t far behind at third with 85.831 points.