PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Carlos Yulo kicked off his golden quest with a dominant performance, finishing with a pair of medals in the men’s gymnastics competition of the 32nd Southeast Asian Games at the Marquee Tent inside the National Olympic Stadium on Monday here.
Yulo, a two-time world champion, brushed off an ankle injury to score a total of 84.000 points in the men’s individual all-around event to formally collect his third SEA Games title.
Thanh Thung Le of Vietnam tallied 80.450 points to settle for the silver while his teammate Thanh Dinh secured the bronze medal with 78.150 points.
The 23-year-old star from Manila, however, failed to make it a golden double after the Philippines faltered in the team all-around event.
Composed of Yulo, Juancho Besana, Justine Ace De Leon, John Ivan Cruz, and Jan Gwynn Timbang, the Philippines posted a total of 305.25 points to settle for the silver medal behind the Vietnamese quartet, which amassed 313.00 points while the Malaysians tallied 295.50 points to secure the bronze.
Still, Yulo is satisfied, saying that his job of helping the Philippines come up with a strong performance in the biennial meet is far from over.
“The job isn not yet done but whatever I did today, I’ll make sure to repeat what I did here tomorrow,” said Yulo, who still has a chance to clinch up to three gold medals as he sees action in the parallel bars and horizontal bar on Tuesday.
“I’ll still perform at my best to make sure that I’ll execute my moves cleanly.”
Yulo added that his faith in his teammates paid a handsome reward.
“I want to give my teammates a chance and the events they picked are all their favorites. They might not get the gold but I trust them,” said Yulo, adding that his team had shown a lot of improvement against the powerhouse Vietnam side.
“We might have gotten a silver medal but for me, our performances are for winners. Back then, the gap in our scores was so big.”
“Now, we only have about an eight-point gap this time. They’re all motivated and kept saying next year is going to be it.”
Also emerging victorious in this slow, rainy day was Filipino-Spanish triathlete Fernando Casares in the men’s division while three-time champion Kim Mangrobang lost her women’s division crown to a naturalized Cambodian.
Casares clocked 58 minutes and 33.5 seconds to clinch the gold medal over Indonesia’s Rashif Yaqin (58:47) and compatriot Andrew Kim Remolino (59:53) in the 750m swim-20km bike-5km run men’s event at the Kep Beach Resort.
Mangrobang, who has been training in Portugal for the past couple of years, clocked 1:07:24 to finish second behind Cambodian naturalized entry Margot Garabedian, who crossed the finish line in 1:05:34.2.
Singapore’s Louisa Marie Middleditch reached the podium in third (1:07:24) while Raven Alcoseba placed fourth (1:08:49.1), more than three minutes behind the 27-year-old Garabedian, who used to represent France in major international tournaments.
Team Philippines was expecting to collect its third gold medal of the day courtesy of world-class pole vaulter EJ Obiena, but heavy downpour at the Morodok Techo National Stadium spoiled what could be his golden moment.
With only two gold medals at the end of the day, the Filipinos slipped to fifth place in the medal tally with 16 gold, 22 silver and 24 bronze medals behind Cambodia (32-27-27), Thailand (21-18-27), Indonesia (20-14-29) and Vietnam (18-21-27).
