PARIS — Two nights after a nearly perfect men's gymnastics performance by Team USA at the Olympics, the flaws returned for the two U.S. gymnasts hoping to win a second historic medal.
In the very first rotation of Wednesday's men's individual all-around final, Frederick Richard fell off the pommel horse. In the next rotation, his teammate Paul Juda stepped out of bounds on his vault. The field was so competitive that mistake-free performances may not have been enough for either gymnast to win; with the errors, it was impossible.
"Lightning had to strike in the same place, like, four times for me to medal today," Juda said afterward. "After vault, I quickly changed my attitude." Rather than mourn his waning medal chances, he explained, he adopted a new mindset: "Try hard no matter what, have fun and be proud of the gymnastics that I was doing."
After he landed his last routine of the night, Juda turned to the pommel horse and gave it a kiss: a tribute, he said later, to "an experience of a lifetime" here at these Olympic Games, individual medal or no.
Both Richard, 20, and Juda, 23, had already won a bronze medal for their efforts in the team all-around final on Monday night, in which the U.S. ended a 16-year team medal drought. To win that medal, the team had to fire on all cylinders. The effort, and the emotion of the win, left Richard still feeling depleted at Wednesday's competition, he said.
"I gave everything in the team final," he said. "It was very worth it, getting the medal. But I didn't bounce back the way I thought I would or wanted to."
In the end, a medal in the men's individual all-around — which the U.S. has been unable to win since 2012 — proved yet again unreachable on Wednesday night at Bercy Arena in Paris.
In any individual all-around final, gymnasts must perform as close to perfectly as possible. Major errors can result in a deduction of half a point, and a fall can cost an entire point — devastating setbacks in a sport in which margins of victory are often measured in tenths or even hundredths.
Richard, the 20-year-old social media star who won an all-around bronze medal at last year's Gymnastics World Championships, was thought to be Team USA's best shot at a medal. Juda's appearance in this final was unexpected — the U.S. figured Brody Malone to appear instead, but Malone's own errors during the qualifying round on Saturday cost him the opportunity.
In that preliminary round, Richard and Juda had finished 10th and 13th, respectively. On Wednesday, Juda finished 14th, followed by Richard in 15th.
China, Japan, Great Britain and Ukraine each fielded multiple strong contenders. Japan's Oka Shinnosuke won gold, followed by China's Zhang Boheng and Xiao Ruoteng in silver and bronze. The individual medals were a complement to Japan's gold and China's silver in the team all-around final.
Richard, who is only 20 years old, says he expects to contend for the next Summer Olympics in 2028, which will be hosted in Los Angeles. "I'm not satisfied with whatever place I got here," he said. "I want to do gymnastics the way I know I can do in practice, which is really the next level, the way I see the Japanese, the Chinese guys do it."
Only one Olympic event remains for a U.S. male gymnast: the Saturday pommel horse final, featuring Stephen Nedoroscik, the unexpected internet star of the team final.
Copyright 2024 NPR
