Carlos Yulo displayed his readiness for next month’s Tokyo Olympics after grabbing the bronze medal in parallel bars of the 2021 All-Japan Apparatus Championships at the Takasaki Arena over the weekend.
The 20-year-old world champion finished with 14.966 points behind two-time Olympian Yusuke Tanaka and Kaito Sugimoto, who shared the gold with identical 15.400 scores.
Performing with a degree of difficulty score of 6.400, Yulo tallied 8.566 for execution for the runner-up honors.
It was an improvement after ranking seventh in the qualification with 14.733.
Despite his feat, Yulo said he still strives to improve for future tournaments particularly in the Olympics, where he will compete in the all-around and floor exercise.
“What a blessing! Being able to play with the best is already an achievement for me,” said Yulo on his Instagram account.
“It was a pretty good performance… but unfortunately, I didn’t reach my personal target score. I’ll definitely be using this experience to improve on my skills for future events.”
Still, Yulo’s latest score was better than the eighth-place performance of China’s You Hao at the 2016 Rio Olympics, who tallied 14.833.
The Gymnastics Association of the Philippines and the Philippine Sports Commission congratulated Yulo’s feat in their social media posts.
Yulo, who is the first Filipino world champion in the sport, has been training extensively in Japan for the past years under Japanese coach Munehiro Kugimiya.