He helped Team USA win a bronze medal with his pommel horse performance.
USA Gymnastics engaged a specialist in an attempt to address the fact that American men had not medaled as a team in Olympic gymnastics since the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency.
It was a wise gamble.
In the team final on Monday, the American men took home the bronze, earning their first Olympic medal as a team since 2008.
Pommel horse performance alone allowed Stephen Nedoroscik to earn a spot on the Olympic squad.
For the first five revolutions, he was compelled to watch from the sidelines for about three hours before anchoring the United States on his speciality event. Warm and attentive, Nedoroscik seemed to be meditating on the NBC broadcast before to his performance.
When the moment arrived, he excelled and helped Team USA earn a podium result.
Nedoroscik, 25, is a rare and somewhat contentious Olympic selection since he competes in only one of six sports. Generally, elite gymnasts are anticipated to represent their country in many competitions, if not all of them.
For Nedoroscik, a Penn State graduate, the math worked, and he offered Team USA its greatest chance to win an Olympic gold as a team and an individual medal.
Though Fred Richard earned bronze in the all-around at the world championships last year and Brady Malone won the global title on the horizontal bar in 2022, he is the only American guy to have qualified for an individual apparatus final in Paris.
Paul Juda and Richard Juda advanced to the all-around championship. Nedoroscik’s astounding score of 15.200 saw him qualify in second position for the pommel horse final.
Each side sent three gymnasts to compete in six different events during the men’s team final: floor, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar.
As long as each team competes in three of the six events, there is no minimum or maximum amount of events a gymnast may complete. Every score is significant.
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“Essentially, it’s because [Nedoroscik’s pommel horse] scores are so much higher than everyone else on that one event that he adds a tremendous amount of potential score,” gymnastics commentator Tim Daggett, a 1984 gold medallist, told NBC Sports.
Compared to an all-around gymnast with the same strengths as the other athletes, Nedoroscik is more important to the team score since his strength happens to be a weakness for the rest of the U.S. squad.
“That one routine from Nedoroscik gives Team USA basically a full point over the next guy in line for the USA,” Daggett said.
To assist bridge the gap over Japan, China, and Great Britain, who consistently medal in the team event, the U.S. men’s program has pushed to raise its start values, or difficulty scores, in the three years between the Olympics in Tokyo and Paris.
Great Britain came in fourth, China grabbed silver, and Japan took home the gold.
Nedoroscik’s risk was even more important because of the men’s team’s greater ease of play.
At the Olympic trials, Brett McClure, the high performance director, said of the Paris Olympic squad, “We’re in a much different position now.” “We’ll have the ability to direct our own fate. We’re going to return to that platform. That is our objective and what is expected.”
Behind China and Japan, McClure projected the men’s scoring potential for the United States to be third in the world going into Paris, including Nedoroscik’s pommel horse performance. They did not do well in the qualifying round, finishing in fifth place.
Since the global championships last year, when the U.S. team also earned a historic bronze medal, the current squad’s abilities have improved by more than a point.
The United States women’s team has won an Olympic medal every Olympics since 1992, but the men’s team has yet to secure a medal. In 1996, 2012, and 2016, they took home the gold medal.
The women’s team has enough gymnasts at every level to execute the hardest feats in the planet, providing it with a safety net equivalent to several falls. Although the American guys don’t have the same edge, with proper execution, they can now compete with the world’s best.
On Monday, they were almost perfect, while some of the other elite teams struggled.
Three years ago in Tokyo, Russia won gold in the men’s team category, while Japan placed second and China claimed third. The Americans in fifth and Great Britain in fourth position failed to make it to the podium. The continuing conflict in Ukraine has prevented Russian gymnasts from competing in Paris.
