26 Sep Carlos Yulo: The Next Chapter
Carlos Yulo came to Nagoya looking for an Asian Games gold medal. He leaves with two.
His first came in the men’s floor exercise, where Yulo scored 14.666 to win the final and claim his first Asian Games title in artistic gymnastics. He finished ahead of Kazakhstan’s Milad Karimi and Japan’s Shoma Tsukiyama, giving the Philippines its first gold medal of the 2026 Asian Games.
The victory also completed a major gap in Yulo’s collection of international titles. After winning Olympic gold in floor exercise and vault at the 2024 Paris Games, he had already reached the highest levels of the sport. The Asian Games gold was one of the major titles still missing. Now, it was his.
But Nagoya gave him another opportunity the following day.
Yulo returned for the vault final, the same event in which he became Olympic champion two years ago. He scored 14.733 on his first vault and 14.466 on his second for a 14.599 total, taking another gold and becoming a two-time Asian Games champion in the space of two days.
There was one more final waiting for him.
In the parallel bars, Yulo finished fourth, just outside the podium. The result meant there would be no third individual medal in Nagoya, but by then he had already accomplished what he came to the Games looking for.
Two gold medals. Floor and vault.
The results add another chapter to a career that has already taken Yulo from the international junior ranks to world and Olympic titles and now to the top of the Asian Games podium. Earlier in the Games, he had also helped the Philippine men’s team finish sixth in the team final, scoring 14.266 on the floor and 14.560 on the vault.
But for us, there is another part of Nagoya worth remembering.
Eight years ago, we were with him in Jakarta.
He was a young gymnast competing for the Philippines at the 2018 Asian Games, still in the early stages of the career that would eventually take him much further. He finished seventh in the floor exercise final that year, a result that belonged to a very different point in his journey.
A lot has happened since then. Yulo became a world champion. He became a two-time Olympic champion. He continued collecting major international titles. And now, at the Asian Games, he finally has the gold medal he had been missing—and then another one.
That is what makes looking back at that photograph different now.
At the time, we were photographing a young gymnast who we knew had something special. We just did not know yet how much of the sport’s biggest stages he would eventually stand on.
Nagoya gave us another moment in that journey. The floor gave him his first Asian Games gold. The vault gave him his second. The parallel bars ended with fourth place.
Not every routine ends with a medal, and not every competition needs to.
For Carlos, the important part was that the title he came looking for was finally his. Then, somehow, he went and won another.
For us, it is another chapter to add to that photograph from Jakarta, another reminder of how much can happen between one Asian Games and the next.
The young gymnast is still there in the photograph. But the career is now much bigger than the moment we captured.
He came looking for gold. He leaves Nagoya with two.
And the story continues.