PARIS — Not all heroes wear capes.
This one wears glasses.
Stephen Nedoroscik’s clutch pommel horse routine during Monday’s team final clinched the United States’ first Olympic medal since 2008 and, in the process, launched a thousand internet memes.
The bespectacled Olympic bronze medalist has been compared to Clark Kent, a Ken whose job is “horse,” and Steve Rogers before and after being injected with the super serum that turned him into Captain America.
A pommel horse specialist, Nedoroscik cheered on his teammates for two hours during a tense competition at Bercy Arena, carried bags and got water. NBC flashed a countdown clock to his performance. Then on the final routine of the final rotation, he stepped up for a 38-second performance that helped the team make history.
“It was a really long day, and I sat in our room and thought about how I get to be the last person [to compete],” said Nedoroscik, who will compete in the pommel horse final on Saturday. “And I framed that in my head as a positive — that I can be the exclamation point.”
He was an emphatic punctuation mark on a night full of highlights for the United States. The team hit 18 for 18 routines, including stuck vaults from Paul Juda and Brody Malone. Asher Hong’s complicated double-flipping, single-twisting vault anchored the rotation and briefly pushed the United States into first place. Frederick Richard, the reigning world bronze medalist, avenged a lackluster high bar routine in the qualifying rounds by showing off upgraded difficulty and scoring the highest mark on the event during Sunday’s competition.
With the table set for a perfect ending, Nedoroscik knew that he was going to deliver. He said he’s never missed a routine if all of his teammates hit before him.
“I had no doubt in my mind that we could just go out there and just hit a massive set,” Hong said.
The 2021 world pommel horse champion has been specializing in his signature event for eight years. Although he grew up practicing all six events, he noticed around high school that he was only progressing on pommel horse, the trickiest event in men’s gymnastics that is often compared to the women’s balance beam. As a one-routine wonder, Nedoroscik collected junior Olympic national titles in 2015 and 2016. People told him early on that he would be in the Olympics one day.
“Back then I was just dorky little kid,” Nedoroscik said during the U.S. Olympic trials, where he hit both of his routines to punch his ticket to Paris. “And now look at me. I’m a dorky adult going to the Olympics.”
On the second day of the Olympic trials, the two-time NCAA pommel horse champion from Penn State also had to wait until the final rotation to compete. Just as he would do one month later at Bercy Arena, Nedoroscik delivered the routine he needed.
Although Nedoroscik earned his position by delivering four strong performances during the U.S. championships and the Olympic trials to swing the formula used to predict the top team-scoring scenarios in his favor, some critics still wondered whether he belonged or whether an event specialist would hurt the team by limiting lineup flexibility.
Instead he helped with the highest U.S. score on any event on Monday.
“It’s like a Cinderella story, fairy tale ending,” said Sam Mikulak, a three-time Olympian turned coach who trains Nedoroscik. “I just hope everyone starts believing and gives him the credit that’s due — especially Team USA, for creating the procedures that got him on the team.”
In the media mixed zone after the meet, Mikulak hadn’t realized that the specialist who once drew side eyes had become the latest American cult hero. It was about time that the shift happened.
“He deserves to be recognized for his individuality,” Mikulak said.
Nedoroscik’s “nerd credentials,” as described on X, are nearly unmatched in sports. The night before the team final, he posted on his Instagram story that he solved a Rubik’s Cube in 9.695 seconds. He said the anxiety he feels when solving a cube is similar to the feeling he gets when working through a pommel horse set.
“When you’re on a really good pace, really good solve, you feel the anxiety, your fingers start slipping,” Nedoroscik said last month, “and in a weird way, it kind of helps you stay in the zone as you’re doing it.”
And then there’s the glasses.
He broke through with the national team while wearing goggles he received as a joke from a Penn State teammate, and he now takes his black-rimmed glasses off for competition. He reaches for them immediately after his routine, but he said can see the equipment without them.
Not that he truly needs vision to dominate.
“It’s all feeling,” Nedoroscik said with a chuckle. “I see with my hands.”
