The U.S. men won the bronze medal in Monday’s team final, clinching their first team Olympic medal since 2008.Stephen Nedoroscik qualified for the Olympic team solely on the strength of his pommel horse routine. He’s the only American man who qualified for an individual apparatus final in Paris, though Fred Richard won all-around bronze at last year’s world championships and Brady Malone won the world title on the horizontal bar in 2022.

Richard and Paul Juda have qualified for the all-around final. Nedoroscik secured second place in the pommel horse final with an impressive score of 15.200.

In the men’s team final, three gymnasts from each team competed in six events: floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and horizontal bar.

A gymnast has no limit or minimum number of events they must perform, provided that each of the six events receives three performances from the team. All scores are counted.

Over the three years from the Tokyo to the Paris Olympics, the U.S. men’s gymnastics team has focused on increasing their start values, or difficulty scores, to narrow the gap with regular team event medalists Japan, China, and Great Britain.

Japan secured gold, China claimed silver, and Great Britain came in fourth.

The U.S. men’s team’s lower difficulty made the decision to include Nedoroscik’s routine crucial.

“We’re now in a vastly different position,” stated Brett McClure, the high-performance director, about the Paris Olympic team at the Olympic trials. “We will control our destiny. Our aim is to return to the podium, as that is both our expectation and goal.”

McClure rated the U.S. men’s scoring potential, counting Nedoroscik’s pommel horse performance, as the world’s third-best going into Paris, trailing China and Japan. However, they faced issues with consistency in the qualifying round and ended up fifth.

Since the previous year’s world championships, where the U.S. team earned a historic bronze, the current team has enhanced their skills’ difficulty by more than a point.

This contrasts sharply with the U.S. women’s team, which has secured a team medal at every Olympics since 1992, including golds in 1996, 2012, and 2016.

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