Caloy Yulo secures 2nd PH spot in Olympics

Caloy Yulo soared his way to Tokyo. Janet Tenorio

By Ivan Saldajeno

MANILA—Caloy Yulo became the second Filipino to secure a place in the Tokyo Olympics next year after making the finals of the men's all-around event of the FIG Artistic Gymnastic Championships at the Hans Martin Schleyer Halle in Stuttgart early Tuesday (Philippine Time).

Yulo placed 18th out of 160 competitors, which is well within the Top 24 cutoff for the finalists.

In fact, he will enter the Sunday (Philippine Time) finals as the 16th seed as the FIG set a limit for finalists per country to two, eliminating the third ranked gymnasts from Russia and China respectively.

A Ukranian, due to two of his teammates already clinching a finals spot ahead of him, missed the cut as well.

Yulo punched his way to the finals after scoring 14.333 points in the vault and parallel bars.

On how Yulo got his ticket to Japan, Gymnastics Association of the Philippines secretary general Bettina Pou, in a statement, explained, "He has moved up as No. 1 in the individual rankings since China, Russia and Japan have already qualified their athletes after their 1-2-3 finish, respectively, at last year’s worlds held in Doha, Qatar."

GAP president Cynthia Carrion lauded the feat, saying, “This is wonderful for Philippine gymnastics and for Caloy. It is an honor for GAP to have the second qualifier to the Olympics.”

Yulo will also play in the standalone floor exercise finals after getting the seventh seed out of eight finalists with a score of 14.666.

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