Caloy Yulo showed what he can do in another category of the men’s artistics gymnastics discipline.
This time around, the 21-year-old top Filipino gymnast took the bronze medal in the parallel bars last Sunday at the 2021 All-Japan Apparatus Championships at the Takasaki Arena in Japan.
Yulo, the world’s no. 1 gymnast in the floor exercises, got his podium finish with a month to go before the Tokyo Olympics, where he is slated to take part.
The bronze finish boosted his confidence when he sees action in the individual all-around event in Tokyo next month.
In claiming third-place honors, Yulo tallied a final score of 14.966, which came from a difficulty score of 6.400 and an execution tally of 8.566.
Japanese Yusuke Tanaka and Kaito Sugimoto shared the gold medal with 15.400.
Yulo, the 2019 Southeast Asian Games silver medalist in the apparatus, earlier settled for seventh place with 14.733 in the this event.
The 4’9 Yulo, the second Filipino to qualify for the Tokyo Games, made it to the Olympics after advancing to the finals of the all-around in the 2019 World Artistic Gymnastics Championship in Stuttgart, Germany.
He finished the year 2020 by sharing no. 1 spot the International Gymnastics Federation’s World Rankings for floor exercises with Spain’s Rayderley Zapata.
Yulo has held the same position for the last six months, after getting important points from world championships in Doha and Melbourne last year, and from Germany in 2018.
Zapata managed to tie Yulo with his Melbourne stint.