[Editors' note: 10th of a series as we reveal SPIN.ph's choices for its yearend SOTY, which is now on its 12th year, leading up to this announcement of the 2024 Sportsman of the Year]
2024 SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR
YEARS and years from now, Carlos Yulo will be remembered for many great things: only the second Filipino athlete to win gold in the Olympics, the first to win multiple gold medals in a single Games, and the first Pinoy gymnast to become world champion.
But more inspirational than those glowing accomplishments was the journey itself.
After he was spotted by a gymnastics coach in a Manila playground and asked to join kids from poor families trained at the old Rizal Memorial's gymnastics gym, Yulo turned this stroke of good fortune into a story of hardwork and perserverance.
Working harder than anyone and wanting it more, the young Yulo rose to become a Palarong Pambansa champion to SouthEast Asia's finest to Asia's best all the way to multiple world champion in the vault and floor exercise.
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After a letdown at the Tokyo Games in 2021, Yulo fulfilled his date with destiny in Paris, where he finally broke through with a gold-medal performance in the floor exercise and followed it with another gold in the vault a day later.
Along the way, the diminutive Filipino gymnast had to overcome a split with his longtime Japanese coach that left him to train for Paris on his own, and a feud between his family and his girlfriend that left him caught in between, and later isolated.
That's resilience in its purest form.
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