Carlos Yulo, the Philippines artistic gymnast aiming for Olympic perfection by learning from his 'failures'

A famous illustration by graphic artist Guy Downes, often posted by athletes, goes like this. Three athletes stand on a podium waving at fans and surrounded by the media in their moment of triumph. This part is labelled, ‘What we see’. The part named, ‘What we don’t see’ shows a multitude of blocks beneath the surface labelled ‘desire, ‘loneliness’, ‘honesty, ‘sacrifice’, ‘hard work’, ‘joy’ and myriad other factors that go into making a successful athlete.

Artistic gymnast Carlos Yulo retweeted the post shared by a fan on 26 July 2021. That date was not incidental.

It was two days after the qualifying competition at Tokyo 2020 in which mistakes in the floor exercise – in which Yulo was the 2019 world champion, the event that enabled him to qualify for the Japan Games – meant he didn’t make the final eight to challenge for an Olympic medal.

Disappointment ensued as Yulo, who was the first Filipino world champion gymnast, was unable to achieve his goal of replicating that feat on the Olympic stage. Not only that, he came away from the Games without any medal, his best finish an agonising fourth place on vault.

That loss only fuelled him further.

“I learned a lot from my experience at the [Tokyo] Olympics,” Yulo said according to Inquirer.net. “I realised that your greatest opponent is yourself. If you don’t focus on what you do, you are bound to finish last.’’

The immediate learning from that experience was put into action two months after the Tokyo Games, when Yulo won gold on vault and silver on parallel bars at the World Championships in Kitakyushu, Japan.

“I try to correct the mistakes that I made in my mind so I will not commit them again,’’ he said.

That fire to achieve his goal incorporates a number of the building blocks showcased in the graphic including those etched with ‘pain’ and ‘perseverance’. The 23-year-old has also gone through most other blocks already on his journey to what he hopes will culminate in Olympic gold.

Carlos Yulo: Risk is always better than regret

So set is Yulo on his goal that he moved to Japan in order to train with the soon-to-be Olympic hosts, after they sent one of their coaches, Munehiro Kugimiya, to train Filipino gymnasts as a friendly gesture. Impressed with Yulo’s skills, the Japan Olympic Association invited the 16-year-old to train under a scholarship programme, which Yulo accepted, studying literature at Teikyo University in Itabashi.

“My mother told me it was better to go to Japan and train with coach Munehiro, so I went. I was a shy kid then, and there was a problem with communication. It was a bit hard since I was alone,” said Yulo of the experience, very much ticking the ‘loneliness’ box.

The pair now share quite a bond with Yulo turning down American schools’ offers in order to stay and train with the Japanese team and the coach he calls his second dad. Yulo also opted to stay and train in Japan following his disappointment at the Tokyo Games. Had he won, he would have returned home. That’s quite the commitment.

Japan is also the breeding ground for the hero he wants to emulate – arguably the greatest male gymnast of all time, Kohei Uchimura.

"My whole mindset is connected to the Olympics," Yulo told reporters at the Southeast Asian Games in November, in which he added five gold medals to his overall tally, which now sits at seven gold and seven silver medals. "I don't want to repeat the same mistakes that I've done there, I want to do something like Kohei Uchimura. Of course that's a really high target but I want to be like (him)."

That desire sets Yulo's focus in the day-to-day training grind.

"Paris is my goal right now, every competition is connected to 2024, my whole mindset is like Olympics, what if today was the Olympics?"

• “I want to do something like Kohei Uchimura”

You’ll never feel 100% ready; do it anyway

Yulo is famed not only for his difficult routines but for the seemingly simple ability to land ‘dead’ – movement of the feet on landing instigates a deduction from the judges. The explosive somersaults performed by Yulo on floor and vault are legendary for their height, form and difficulty, which have taken years of training to perfect... and even then, they sometimes go wrong.

Yulo is happy to share when those moments have not quite gone to plan – posting fails on social media to show that not only is it okay to fail, but that it is mandatory in improving.

Gymnasts can often make the sport look easy but a video showing Yulo trying the extremely difficult triple back somersault on floor exercise for the first time, shows that confronting fear and doubt with courage is also something an athlete must do, over and over again, to progress.

You have to fight through some days to earn the best days of your life

It’s not only fear of the physical aspects an athlete must confront. Yulo has been honest about wanting to improve his mindset after Tokyo but also following the 2022 World Championship in Liverpool, UK.

After qualifying top on floor exercise, the only gymnast to break the hallowed 15 mark, Yulo came in seventh after an uncharacteristic falter in the final.

“I get insecure about myself for the things I cannot do that others can,” Yulo said in a virtual press conference following the event. “Sometimes, I focus on the things I cannot do that I cannot see my good sides anymore.”

A potential challenger for the all-around medals in Paris, which involves the total score after competing on all six pieces of apparatus, Yulo was again disappointed with his 2022 result of eighth at the Liverpool worlds.

As one of the top qualifiers for the final, Yulo was in the first group with the likes of the defending champion from People’s Republic of China, Zhang Boheng, and Japan’s Hashimoto Daiki, who claimed gold this time around, and Tanigawa Wataru who bagged bronze.

“It was my first time being grouped with the really good ones,” said Yulo. “That was when I realised I lack a lot of things. Not just in skills, but they’re really different mentally. I want to be like them. I look up to those gymnasts.”

Trying to find that balance is the holy grail for gymnasts the world over but when you are in the top echelons of the sport, against other finely tuned athletes, those building blocks of success become even more important.

“It’s funny because Gymnastics is not always fun, and it’s not always about winning in the competition,” said Yulo in an Instagram post that showcased a couple of errors in his routines. “It’s all about standing up after that fall. To give your all till the dismount, to not give up on what you love, to search for ways to improve and to not lose to yourself in everyday training. I mean this is definitely not easy but this is my life.”

Yulo is on the same wavelength as one of greatest sport stars of all time, basketball icon Michael Jordan who said: “'I've failed over and over again in my life, that is why I succeed'.

What's next for Carlos Yulo?

The third edition of four of the 2023 FIG Apparatus World Cup series is taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan from 9-12 March.

The final edition will take place in Cairo, Egypt from 27 to 30 April.

Yulo will then compete in the 31st Cambodia SEA Games from 5-17 May, before focusing on the 52nd FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium starting 30 September.

The world meet is the main qualifying tournament for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.