Stephen Nedoroscik, the ‘Pommel Horse Guy’ who captivated the internet, gets bronze 2024 news
PARIS — For Stephen Nedoroscik, it’s official: Solving his Rubik’s cube in under 10 seconds the morning before competing in the Olympic Games has now gone two for two as an omen of a medal.
You may know Stephen Nedoroscik simply as “Pommel Horse Guy,” if you are one of the many Americans who were dazzled by his Clark Kent-style take-off-the-glasses-and-save-the-day heroics in the men’s gymnastics team finals earlier this week, in which his pommel horse routine clinched a historic medal for the United States.
On the morning before the team final, he solved a Rubik’s cube in less than 10 seconds and declared it a “good omen” in an Instagram post.
On Saturday, Stephen Nedoroscik did it again. “Good omen pt. 2,” he wrote, and seven hours later, he won bronze in the Olympic pommel horse final in Paris.
He described the Rubik’s cube as a means to meditate and pass the time during lengthy competition days. He used to be concerned that a rapid solve was a worrisome sign, indicating that bad performance would soon follow. “In the past, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to end up being the best thing I do today.’ So it would kind of freak me out,” he told me.
That has changed this week. “But after I solved it in under 10 seconds before team finals and then again in under 10 seconds today, I was like, ‘All right, we got this,'” he added, chuckling during a news conference afterwards.
On Saturday, Stephen Nedoroscik was one of eight guys contending for gold in this specialized apparatus, which is sometimes a weakness for other talented all-around gymnasts.
Before he began, he removed the glasses that had won him so many fans and hung them over the lip of the chalk bowl. Then came his performance, which lasted about 40 seconds and featured fascinating swings of his legs in circles around the horse, one-handed twirls on the handles, and walks up and down the contraption.
Stephen Nedoroscik matched for the top score in the qualification stage last weekend, boosting his chances of winning gold in the final.
However, other participants executed more difficult routines on Saturday, notably Ireland’s Rhys McClenaghan, who won the event at the World Championships last year and repeated his victory on Saturday with a score of 15.533. Nariman Kurbanov of Kazakhstan won silver.
In the end, Stephen Nedoroscik’s 15.3 earned him bronze. Stephen Nedoroscik was the only American male gymnast to get to an apparatus final.
Stephen Nedoroscik finished fifth in the eight-man lineup, trailing McClenaghan. Stephen Nedoroscik elected not to observe any competitors or check scores before his turn.
Instead, he stated that he chose to stick with his customary regimen, regardless of the conditions, rather than switching to a more demanding schedule. “I played around with upgrades yesterday, and it just didn’t feel like it was going that well,” Stephen Nedoroscik explained, adding that he has been battling with stress issues.
That meant his prospects of beating McClenaghan’s top score were minimal.
“I really didn’t know what he scored, and I didn’t know what I had to get,” he said. “But landing on the ground and seeing his absolutely huge score, I was like, ‘I don’t think I’ve done enough, but wow, that is amazing for Rhys.'”
McClenaghan then drew Stephen Nedoroscik in for a hug. “I was nervous watching you, because you can do any routine,” McClenaghan stated at the press conference, turning to face Stephen Nedoroscik. “He can do huge difficulty and pull it off when it matters.”
Stephen Nedoroscik, a pommel horse expert, was chosen for the United States men’s gymnastics team to supplement what authorities saw as a relative deficiency on the remainder of the roster.
The attention he’s received over the last week for his efforts has been both enjoyable and distracting, he added.
“I’ve just been consistently on top of the world for the past week now,” Stephen Nedoroscik said. “I literally had to go and turn off my notifications yesterday because I needed to be able to lock in for this competition.”
In the team final, the United States had been allocated to the pommel horse for the last rotation. And Stephen Nedoroscik went last, clinching the bronze for the United States, the country’s first team medal in 16 years.
But, until then, he had to wait as his colleagues competed in the other five events; in its coverage, NBC even showed a countdown timer, indicating the hour-and-a-half that Stephen Nedoroscik had to sit on the sidelines.
When he completed his act, his colleagues exploded into shouts and carried him onto their shoulders. “It was just the greatest moment of my life, I think, and I am so happy to have been there,” Stephen Nedoroscik told the crowd.
