Sam Mikulak pulled Stephen Nedoroscik close and tasked the American pommel horse specialist with the impossible.
With the U.S. men's gymnastics team's first Olympic medal in 16 years just one routine away, Mikulak told Nedoroscik that he didn't need to go all out. He said 80% would be good enough, even though he knew full well that Nedoroscik never does anything at 80%—not in his sport, nor when solving a Rubik's Cube. “You have to trick yourself,” said Mikulak, a three-time Olympian turned coach. “You've got to make sure you don't let all the noise get into your head.”
That usually isn't a problem for the 25-year-old from Worcester, Massachusetts. It takes a certain type of single-mindedness to make the choices Nedoroscik has made over the last decade, dedicating himself to a single pursuit and focusing on an event that has long been a weakness for the U.S. men's national team program.
Yes, there is monotony involved. How could there not be?
"I don’t know how I don’t lose my mind,” Nedoroscik said before the Games. “But every day I go into the gym and there’s still something to do. There’s still something to improve.”
Proving a point, he nailed his routine during qualifying on Saturday to earn a spot in the event finals later in the Games. But Monday night was different. Teammates Frederick Richard, Brody Malone, Paul Juda, and Asher Hong had put together 17 straight routines without a miss, putting the Americans in position to reach the medal stand for the first time since the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
While Nedoroscik had some wiggle room—the U.S. had a fairly healthy lead after Juda and Malone hit their sets before he saluted the judges—he didn't want to merely hold on. He wanted to prove a point, not just to himself, but to those who wondered if he deserved to be there in the first place.
What followed were 45 seconds of sublime brilliance, with Nedoroscik's hands traveling from one end of the horse to the other, his legs swooping this way and that. A few feet away, his four teammates—and the sizable contingent of U.S. fans inside Bercy Arena—roared as a medal that had seemed distant for a program that had finished a distant fifth in each of its last three trips under the rings drew closer.
By the time Nedoroscik neared his dismount, he knew his job was complete. The celebration began before his feet even hit the mat.
All those years, all those reps, both physical and mental, all the difficult times when he wondered whether to keep going, all the quirks he's developed along the way—from the non-prescription goggles he sometimes wears to the chef's kiss to the camera he occasionally makes—led up to that moment.
And he did not miss, delivering “the exclamation point” with a 14.866 to finish off a performance the U.S. men's program hopes provides serious momentum heading into the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
“I kind of in that moment was like, ‘All right, let’s run it back and let’s go out there and do our thing,’” Nedoroscik said.
A “thing” that has long been a sore spot for the U.S. in major international competition. The 2012 Olympic team topped qualifying. Then they led off on pommel horse in the finals and saw their medal hopes vanish one mistake at a time.
Nedoroscik understood the history. It's one of the reasons he gravitated toward pommels. Another is that it requires many things—stamina, strength, and creativity among them—that he has in spades, particularly that last one.
He describes himself as a “late bloomer” on the event. Those early struggles only helped him press forward.
“Running into trouble on the apparatus early on taught me how to fight, how to stay on, how to really go for that routine,” he said. “And I think that that has stuck with me throughout.”
Unlike other events, which are painstakingly laid out and practiced on end for months if not years, pommel horse allows gymnasts to color outside the lines and make things up as they go along. Miss an element here? Well, maybe you can make it up by trying something else later in the routine. He says the end result is the feeling of “flying through the air," though it's more akin to levitation.
