Brody Malone, Frederick Richard, Asher Hong, Paul Juda, and Stephen Nedoroscik were collegians before they stood with their arms wrapped around each other in a fraternity permanently ingrained in U.S. Olympic memory.
Indeed, the ambitions the American men’s gymnastics team had developed from infancy started in little gyms throughout the nation. But at Stanford, Michigan, and Penn State they became real.
Thus, they drew on the knowledge they acquired throughout all those meetings in all those often sparsely filled gyms that taught them about pressure and collaboration, and belief when it was time for those aspirations to become vividly realized inside a boisterous Bercy Arena on Monday night.
Indeed, the bronze medal the Americans so fervently acquired marks the end of a sixteen-year drought on the main platform for the sport.
Still, it was also a message to athletic directors at the twelve colleges with Division I gymnastics as well as, to be honest, to the ones without Division I gymnastics, that the sport is worth keeping.
“If you want to keep seeing USA Gymnastics and Team USA on a gymnastics podium, at least on the men’s side, you’re going to have to give us more chances to compete in college,” said Jewitt, a graduate student at Michigan.
Possibilities threatened by a fast-changing college athletics scene that can vanish rapidly. The five men standing on the podium with their arms around each other are only too aware of.
Rising junior Richard from Michigan has set his life’s goal in bringing more people to an aspect of the sport that, at least in the United States, has long been quietly popular.
And while Richard is smart enough to know the one thing guaranteed to draw people to men’s gymnastics isn’t a viral video, but hardware like the medal he kept snatching in the joyful aftermath, he is carving out a fast-increasing niche on social media.
“My goal even here was to make a statement that the U.S. is getting stronger and stronger and we’re only (going up,” Richard remarked. And we probably did that today. Many young males observing, I believe, find inspiration in us.
For Richard growing up in the Boston suburbs, that was the norm. The gym wall featured images of the 2004 and 2008 U.S. men’s Olympic teams, medals winning. Richard would fix his gaze on the images and question how the teams assembled all the elements.
Richard added, “It looks like they all came together on the same day and just did these perfect routines.” And you are like, how is that possible?
Richard personally learned about it.
Over their eighteen performances in the final and finished closer to second-place China than fourth-place Britain, the Americans did not show a significant decrease. They leaned into the vitality of a vocal contingent of American supporters who gave a taste of what Los Angeles four years from now might look like.
Mostly, though, they relied on one other and their experiences to dismiss an uncertain qualifying session on Saturday in which they completed a messy fifth.
Since they had all been there, “We just told each other we were going treat it like an NCAA championship,” Malone said. And a team is under great pressure from rivals. And this competitiveness is not unique. Indeed, this one is a tiny bit different and somewhat larger. Still, same idea.
Possibly with a far more powerful outcome.
Nedoroscik’s age is 26. Malone is 24 years of age. Jews count 23. Twenty years separate Hong from Richard. The U.S. men’s program has actual momentum for the first time in a long while. Still, the pipeline behind them must remain churning if we are to maintain it.
The 2010s saw a notion in which the U.S. had become stagnant in part because individuals in the core group at the top were a touch too comfortable because in part of a lack of rivalry from those striving to catch them.
Sam Mikulak participated in three Olympics representing teams with rather high talent levels. Though on Monday night he was talking with Nedoroscik as he got ready for his pommel horse session, he never returned home carrying a medal.
As they spoke, Mikulak advised Nedoroscik to remain composed; 80 percent of his best would be sufficient. To absorb a moment Mikulak dreamed of but never quite could hold.
And as Nedoroscik elegantly soared from one end of the horse to the other, his hands working faithfully on an event that has caused the Americans fits for years, the bronze that seemed in some ways like gold was earned.
Standing there in the aftermath, Mikulak couldn’t help but wonder about the future.
“I believe the lads will be hungry for more,” he remarked. And ideally, this drives American men’s gymnastics never seen before.