Before the U.S. Olympic men's gymnasts experienced the weight of a bronze medal around their necks Monday night, or the sight of the American flag raising to the Bercy Arena rafters, or the celebratory chants of U-S-A, they called a meeting to remember an experience they all knew well.
Winning an NCAA championship.
The five of them had collectively won five NCAA team titles and 19 individual championships. They knew the pressure that comes from the need to perform on every routine. They understood that all members of the team — no matter how many times they were selected to perform — would be equally important. They knew it because of those championships.
Paul Juda, who won NCAA all-around, floor exercise and vault titles at Michigan, delivers a stellar performance in Paris. (Photo by Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
And when the pressure intensified on the final rotation Monday, their medal position coming down to the final team member's routine, they credited that experience with snapping Team USA's 16-year medal drought in their sport.
"If you want to see success on the Olympic stage, I don't think there's anything better to prep you than an NCAA competition," said Paul Juda, who won NCAA all-around, floor exercise and vault championships at Michigan. "We all said that: This competition, we were just going to treat like NCAA championships. This would be like the all-star team if you ever made an NCAA championship team. And so that's what we treated it like.
"So I would say to any collegiate program and any collegiate athletic director, if you want to continue to see success in the USA, you're going to want to fight for that NCAA podium, as well."
The Olympics is a different level of competition than the NCAA, with gold medalist Japan and silver medalist China dominating the sport to such a degree that the rest of the world has been left scrapping for bronze in recent years. But the pressure the Olympic format creates bears similarities the U.S. team members could lean on.
Olympic teams must select three of their five members to compete in each of six disciplines: floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars and high bar. In the finals, all scores count. You can't throw out a low score if someone makes a mistake. There's no margin for error.
But what may sound daunting was a challenge already conquered for the U.S. team.
"We decided, 'You know what? Today is just like the NCAAs. Every routine counts. And we just have to do our job.'"
And they did the job — at times in spectacular fashion — in events for which they'd previously won NCAA titles.
Frederick Richard, who won NCAA championships in the high bar, parallel bars and all-around at Michigan, brought roars from the crowd after a spectacular 14.833 finish on the high bar — the fourth discipline for the U.S. and an event that Juda said felt like a turning point in the team's medal pursuit. Richard also scored team highs on the parallel bars and floor routine.
Asher Hong, who has won two NCAA team titles at Stanford while also capturing two individual championships in vault, one in rings and one in parallel bars — scored team highs on vault and rings Monday. And fellow Cardinal Brody Malone, the most decorated member of the team with three team titles and seven NCAA championships in all-around, floor, pommel horse and high bar, demonstrated his versatile strengths with strong performances in five of the six Olympic disciplines, recovering from a disappointing preliminary Saturday in which he fell four times and failed to advance to the all-around finals.
With just one of its 18 routines remaining, the U.S. was in a strong position to medal, but it needed a clinching performance from former Penn State standout Stephen Nedoroscik, who was selected to perform in just one event — the pommel horse. With Great Britain and Ukraine nipping at the heels of the U.S., Nedoroscik held the fate of the U.S. medal drought in his hands.
But pommel horse happens to be his specialty — he's a two-time NCAA champion, which he followed up with four U.S. championships and a 2021 world title. And after sticking a near-flawless landing and receiving a 14.866 score that sealed the bronze medal for the U.S., his teammates rushed to his side and lifted him into the air as Nedoroscik raised his fists to the sky and screamed in glory.
"It was a really long day leading up to that moment," Nedoroscik said. "I thought about it before, how I get to be the last person who goes in the Olympics (medal round), and I put that in my head as a positive. I can be the exclamation point. During that dismount I was already smiling. I saluted the judges and looked at these guys, and they were jumping up and down.
"It was the greatest moment of my life."
But while those individual performances provided the winning scores, Malone is certain of the source.
College gymnastics had taught them how to compete not just for themselves, but for their team, he said. And on Monday, that training translated into an Olympic bronze medal.
"It's just a testament that we've all been through that program," Malone said. "We all know what it's like to compete for a team. So it was really easy to go out there because we had that preparation from the NCAAs. And it just made it so much easier to go out there and raise your hand and salute and hit for each other."
Frederick Richard's spectacular high bar routine, scoring 14.833, helped propel the U.S. Olympic men's gymnastics team to a bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, a testament to the team's NCAA championship experience. (Photo by Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
