Stephen Nedoroscik is America’s quirky, glasses-wearing pommel horse hero

PARIS - Stephen Nedoroscik can solve a Rubik’s Cube in 8.68 seconds, and he enjoys playing video games, particularly one that resembles soccer but with a car that blasts the ball around. Certain songs are banned from his playlists; they became unlucky when he performed poorly at competitions around the same time he loved them.

Nedoroscik’s coach, Syque Caesar, describes the 25-year-old as “quirky, funny, goofy” and someone who “dances to his own tune.” Nedoroscik also happens to be better than just about everyone on the planet when it comes to swinging his body around a pommel horse.

And for the U.S. men’s gymnastics team to win a breakthrough bronze medal at the Olympics, the country needed Nedoroscik and his 40-second act of athletic excellence. He’s in Paris for one reason - pommel horse. This is his specialty, and he’s so good at it that he earned a spot on the Olympic team ahead of his peers who compete on everything. Critics doubted whether he was the right person to round out this team. But after he sealed the bronze in Monday’s team final, they’ll never ask that question again.

Nedoroscik had nothing to do until he had everything to do. Pommel horse was the U.S. team’s final event, and he was the final competitor. He waited in his sweatsuit, cupping his hands to his face as he screamed through his teammates’ routines. At one point, Nedoroscik left the arena to practice his pommel horse set in the warm-up gym that’s hidden from public view. Through it all, as the other U.S. gymnasts delivered one fantastic performance after another, he estimates he visualized his routine about 100 times.

“I do it all the time,” Nedoroscik said of visualization. “Sometimes I think I do it too much, but what else am I to do with those empty spaces?”

The NBC broadcast featured a countdown to Nedoroscik’s pommel horse performance, and as his time approached, the camera captured him with his eyes closed under his glasses and his head tilted back. And for the audience, he became something of a cult hero.

That’s the power of the Olympics: Viewers who cannot name the six apparatuses in men’s gymnastics fall in love with a glasses-wearing pommel horse star who clinched a bronze medal.

Before the competition, Nedoroscik posted a photo of a Rubik’s Cube solve time on social media: 9.321 seconds. “Good omen,” he wrote.

When Nedoroscik’s turn finally arrived, the Americans had performed so well that he essentially just needed to avoid disaster. But pommel horse is the apparatus on which disaster often strikes. Athletes are constantly in motion, maintaining their rhythm as their legs swing around the apparatus and their hands support their elevated bodies.

Nedoroscik has a difficult routine with a high scoring ceiling, but he has at times struggled in pressure-filled moments. He didn’t know the precise math, but he figured if he hit his routine, his team would win a medal. Because of the long wait and the stakes, Nedoroscik “probably had the most pressure than any other athlete tonight on the competition floor,” U.S. high performance director Brett McClure said.

As soon as he made it through beautifully, delivering a score more than enough for a comfortable third-place finish, the joy was instantaneous. Nedoroscik punched his clenched fist toward the sky and retrieved his glasses from the chalk bucket. He hugged one of his coaches as they both jumped up and down. Before he had even placed his glasses back on his face, his teammates swarmed and lifted him in the air.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” he said to his teammates. “Did we do it?”

They happily answered.

Nedoroscik is in Paris to do this 40-second routine three times. He was spectacular in the qualifying round, tying for the top score in the field, and then he delivered again for the team. He’ll have a chance to win an individual gold medal in Saturday’s apparatus final. Yet his spot on the team was critiqued, and he knew it.

“I was completely aware of it,” Nedoroscik said. “I really wanted to make the Olympic team, and I knew that there was going to be backlash to it. I do one event compared to these guys that are phenomenal all-arounders. And I am a phenomenal horse guy. But it’s hard to fit on a five-guy team.”

The Paris team was built with a medal as the goal. The U.S. selection committee analyzed results from nationals and the Olympic trials, and this group of five men maximized the potential score in the team competition, which requires three athletes to compete per apparatus. The approach favored a high-upside specialist such as Nedoroscik over a steady all-arounder.

The selection procedures included a scenario in which the five-member team was automatically locked into place without any further discussion. If the five gymnasts who maximized the team score were the same when using two different analysis approaches, that would be the team. And that’s what happened. A committee didn’t choose Nedoroscik. Simple math handed him a spot.

At national championships and the Olympic trials, Nedoroscik had one standout routine but the other three were not quite up to his potential. He didn’t perform his full repertoire of difficult elements - sometimes intentionally and other times because he had to improvise mid-routine.

Including a specialist on the team can be risky. Nedoroscik’s value hinged on his ability to hit one routine. He channeled the criticism into motivation.

“People were worried he was going to hurt the team,” said Sam Mikulak, a three-time Olympian who helps coach Nedoroscik. “And he was the one to [clinch] it in the end. It’s like a Cinderella story, fairy-tale ending.”

When told that strangers on social media embraced Nedoroscik during the team final, Mikulak was shocked but thrilled.

Nedoroscik, hardly recruited while in high school before heading to Penn State, has been a prominent elite gymnast since the previous Olympic cycle, initially known as the “goggles guy” because he wore sport glasses when he competed. He has since ditched the glasses and explained: “I don’t think I actually use my eyes on pommel horse. It’s all feeling. I see with my hands.”

He had a chance to earn a spot to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, particularly because an atypical format allowed the U.S. team to bring a four-member team plus an individual whose scores didn’t factor into the team total. A single-event specialist was perfect for that individual role. But Nedoroscik fell at trials, and the United States brought a different pommel horse specialist to Tokyo instead.

Later that year, Nedoroscik went to the world championships and won the gold medal on pommel horse. Worlds held immediately after an Olympics features just individual competition, and when Nedoroscik earned a spot on the U.S. squad in 2022, he failed to deliver in the team final.

Those past mistakes lingered over Nedoroscik’s otherwise remarkable ability. But earlier this year, he shifted his mindset. He stopped focusing on winning and started thinking about a single skill. He had a breakthrough performance at an international competition in March, and Mikulak asked how he did it. Nedoroscik explained that he just focused on one element called a Russian flop.

So as Nedoroscik talked with Mikulak here moments before routine, he told his coach: “It’s just one Russian flop.”

Then he worked through the most important performance of his career and became the nation’s pommel horse hero.