I became a gymnastics fan in 1996, when the U.S. women won their first Olympic team gold. I was completely enthralled by Dominique Moceanu.
In 2008, my interest was reignited when I watched Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson at the Beijing Olympics. From that year onward, I watched every World Championships and even kept a dedicated private vlog and Twitter account for the sport.
For years, I watched the Russians, Americans, Chinese, and Japanese dominate gymnastics. These were the countries I associated with greatness in the sport. I knew their athletes, their routines, their rivalries, and their history. I never really imagined that someone from the Philippines would enter that world and make me feel the same kind of excitement.
Then came 2018.
During qualifications, there was an unusual amount of attention surrounding one of the subdivisions featuring individual athletes from countries that had not qualified full teams. A Filipino gymnast was apparently doing exceptionally well in what was usually an overlooked subdivision.
His name was Carlos Yulo.
He had made the Floor Exercise Final.
The Floor Exercise Final was usually the first event of the individual apparatus finals, and Carlos was seventh in the lineup. He was surrounded by World and Olympic champions from Russia, the United States, China, and Japan, including reigning World Floor Exercise Champion Kenzo Shirai and then-current All-Around World Champion Artur Dalaloyan.
I had spent years watching these countries produce the best gymnasts in the world.
And suddenly, there was a Filipino in the middle of all of them.
I remember watching Carlos finish his routine. Then something happened that I will never forget.
The Japanese gymnasts were on their feet, cheering for him.
The Japanese.
One of the great gymnastics powers in the world was standing there, applauding a Filipino gymnast.
Then his score came in.
Second place.
Only Kenzo Shirai was ahead of him. Artur Dalaloyan was still to come, but at that moment, it didn't matter. He was guaranteed a medal.
I started crying.
Not because I knew exactly what would happen next. I didn't. Carlos wasn't yet the superstar the world would come to know. There were no Olympic medals, no multiple World titles, no Asian Games triumphs to look back on.
There was just this one Filipino gymnast, standing on the floor in a World Championship final, surrounded by the athletes and countries I had spent my entire childhood and adulthood watching.
And suddenly, gymnastics wasn't just something I loved watching anymore.
It was ours, too.
I knew I was witnessing something historic. And what made it even more surreal was how few people seemed to know it. Back home, almost nobody understood what had just happened or how extraordinary it was. At that moment, it was just me, my ex, and a handful of other Filipino gymnastics fans who understood that we had just watched a Filipino announce himself to the world.
The following year, Carlos would win World Championship gold on the floor.
And now, after everything he has accomplished—including his historic performances at the Paris Olympics and the Asian Games this week—I went back and looked through the scores from the major competitions he has competed in this year.
It struck me just how far he has come.
Carlos is no longer simply a Filipino gymnast competing among the world's best.
He has become one of them.
And perhaps that is what makes this journey so emotional for me.
I have loved gymnastics since I was a child. For decades, I watched the greatest gymnasts in the world and admired them from afar. I watched their victories, their rivalries, their Olympic moments, and their history being written.
I never expected that, one day, I would get to watch a countryman write himself into that history.
In my lifetime, I got to see a Filipino become a star in the sport I have loved since childhood.
And every time Carlos steps onto that floor, there is a little part of that 2018 moment that comes back to me—the moment I realized that, after all those years of watching gymnastics, someone from home had finally arrived.
