HE may just be 4-foot-11, but Carlos Yulo was the giant among Filipino athletes in 2024.
Yulo pulled off a feat no Filipino has done before: winning two gold medals in one Olympic year.
He dominated the floor exercise and the vault events at the Paris Games in July to achieve glory as the greatest Filipino Olympian ever.
For this remarkable accomplishment, The Manila Times has named the gymnast from Malate, Manila, its Athlete of the Year.
After a medal-less campaign in the Tokyo Olympics and beset by family problems, Yulo started his quest for redemption in Paris on Aug. 3 by amassing 15.000 points in the floor exercise, his favorite event, to win the gold.
Barely getting any sleep, he was back in the arena the following night and ruled the vault with an average of 15.116 points.
The 24-year-old enthralled fans with a high-level execution of the dragulescu pike in his first vault to net 15.433 points — 6.000 in difficulty and 9.433 in execution.
The fourth to perform in the final, Yulo then executed a kasamatsu double in his second vault for 14.800 points — 5.600 in difficulty and 9.200 in execution.
But even before Paris, Yulo, the world champion in floor exercise (2019) and vault (2021), was already collecting medals, foreshadowing his golden performance.
He won a bronze medal in floor exercise at the Baku leg of the World Cup series in March, a gold in parallel bars and a silver in vault in the Doha leg in April.
In May in Uzbekistan, Yulo stamped his class in the Asian Championships as he ruled the all-around, floor exercise, vault and parallel bars events.
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