THE Philippines finally tallied its first gold medal on Day 5 of the 2026 Asian Games, courtesy of the two-time Olympic champion gymnast Carlos Yulo.
Yulo delivered a near-perfect performance of 14.666 points on Thursday to snatch the gold medal in men’s floor exercise at the Nagoya City General Gymnasium (Rainbow Hall).
The 26-year-old opened his performance with a double-sided spin, and continued to execute his twists tightly, showing no wobble on all his landings.
He scored 8.966 for execution and 5.7 for degree of difficulty to outscore his opponents and give the Philippines its first gymnastics gold in the Asian Games.
It also allowed the Philippine anthem to be played for the first time in Nagoya.
Yulo is the second Filipino athlete to win gold medals in the Olympics, World Championships, Asian Games and Southeast Asian Games after weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz.
His brother Eldrew also reached the floor exercise final but slipped in his performance and scored 12.233.
Crowd favorite Shoma Tsukiyama of Japan performed ahead of Yulo and tallied 14.566.
Kazakhstan’s Karimi Milad, who placed sixth in the preliminary round, gave a stunning routine in the finals and received 14.600 points, nearly stealing the gold from Yulo.
Milad obtained the silver and Tsukiyama took home the bronze medal.
Yulo emerged as the top qualifier on Monday after garnering 14.600 points, while his younger brother Eldrew finished fourth in the qualifications with 13.966.
Carlos is set to compete on the vault and parallel bars medal rounds, while Eldrew has one more chance to win a medal in the horizontal bar, with all of the events happening on Friday.
Another Philippine gymnastics team mainstay Juancho Miguel Besana is competing in the vault final.
Swimmer Kayla Sanchez, meanwhile, missed the podium in the women’s 50-meter freestyle event on Thursday afternoon at the Tokyo Aquatics Center.
Sanchez, a two-time Olympic medal winner while representing Canada in 2021, clocked 24.75 seconds on Thursday to place fourth, just.29 seconds shy of China’s bronze medalist Yujie Cheng, who finished in 24.46 seconds.
Qingfeng Wu of China posted a new Asian Games record of 23.98 seconds for the gold medal while Siobhan Haughey of Hong Kong clocked 24.32 seconds for the silver medal.
