Carlos Yulo settles for vault bronze at Asian Championships

Olympic champion Carlos Yulo saw his three-year reign end in vault after settling for the bronze medal in the 12th Senior Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships on Sunday, June 8, in Jecheon, South Korea.The 25-year-old Yulo, who is also the reigning Olympic champion in the said apparatus, scored 14.333 points from his two vaults 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 and 14.133 on his second, but it was not enough to overshadow the impressive performance of Olfati, who topped the qualifiers last Friday, June 6.Olfati, a silver medalist at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games who finished seventh at the 2024 Paris Olympics, wowed the judges and 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.So far, Yulo has three medals after winning the floor exercise gold on Saturday, Jun 7, and the individual all-around bronze on Friday, Jun 6.He finished seventh in rings the day before.Yulo currently battles in two more apparatus finals in horizontal bar and parallel bars.He is the last qualifier in horizontal bar and came in fourth in the parallel bars qualifiers.