'Feels Like I’m Nauseous': Carlos Yulo Exposed His Absurd Routine That Helped Winning Paris Olympics Gold

‘Feels Like I’m Nauseous’: Carlos Yulo Exposed His Absurd Routine That Helped Winning Paris Olympics Gold

Aug 4, 2024 | 11:01 AM EDT

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Carlos Yulo made history on August 4th by winning the vault routine at the Paris Olympics. His performance was spectacular, earning him a score of 15.116 and securing his second gold medal of the Games. In doing so, Yulo edged out Armenia’s Artur Davtyan (14.966), who took silver, and Great Britain’s Harry Hepworth (14.949), who won bronze. Despite the intense pressure, Yulo manages to keep his mental health in check with an absurdly meticulous pre-competition ritual, which he revealed helps keep him calm. So, what is it?

Well, before each competition, he immerses himself in a rigorous mental rehearsal. He repeats his routines in his mind until he falls asleep. This obsessive focus can become so exhausting for him that it sometimes makes him feel nauseous. As he described, “Sometimes it even makes me feel like I’m nauseous because I’m so focused on making things happen the way I want.” Despite the intensity of this process, he believes that this visualization is crucial for achieving his goals, even though it can be incredibly tiring. But for him, it proved to be a booster.

Carlos highlighted the importance of mental preparation in his training, noting that even when he was unwell, his body instinctively performed at its best as soon as he stepped into the gym. However, this made him win gold on August 3 too. Carlos Yulo made history by becoming the first Filipino man to snag gold in the men’s floor exercise finals.

His routine was a showstopper, featuring a jaw-dropping three-and-a-half twist dismount that left the crowd on the edge of their seats and earned him an exception score of 15.000. In doing so, he pulled the rug out from under defending champion Artem Dolgopyat of Israel. Carlos Yulo’s journey has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride.

From Tokyo’s slip-ups to Paris’s gold medals, Yulo’s changed the game!

At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Yulo earned a bronze medal on the parallel bars at the All-Japan Championships but faced challenges in the qualification rounds, including a fall on his first tumbling pass and missing the floor exercise final. Despite struggles in other events and narrowly missing a bronze in the vault final by 0.017 points, Yulo made a pivotal decision to change his approach.

After 2021, Yulo won gold in the floor, vault, and parallel bars at the 2022 Asian Championships and again in the same events at the 2023 Asian Championships. With such waves in gymnastics under Japanese coach Munehiro Kugimiya since 2013, Yulo decided to switch things up in 2023 by returning to his former coach, Filipino Aldrin Castaneda.

Choosing to skip the Asian Games to focus on the World Championships, Yulo said on his time with Kugimiya, saying, “I tried talking to him, to compromise when it comes to gymnastics—like, ‘Okay, I’ll follow you. I’ll do everything that you want me to do.’ I will really do everything.” Despite these challenges, Yulo’s gamble paid off. With Castaneda back in his corner, he then qualified for the Paris Olympics and delivered a stunning performance, winning gold twice.