Stephen Nedoroscik beat all odds and achieved an Olympic moment, and then he did it

PARIS — Somewhere after dismounting from the pommel horse and celebrating with his teammates, Stephen Nedoroscik did what he always does after a competition: He reached for his glasses. In the span of a single Olympic moment, those goggles have become something of an Internet sensation. But they’re not Miranda Priestly-style props in “The Devil Wears Prada,” tossed on and off for effect; Nedoroscik has a disease that leaves his eyes permanently dilated.

“But I don’t need to see when I ride,” Nedoroscik said, a bronze medal around his neck and a grin on his face. “It’s all about feeling.”

Nedoroscik felt his way through a two-minute set and into Olympic folklore. A vaulting horse specialist in Paris who did one thing exceptionally well, he was the last man standing in the men’s team gymnastics final on Monday. His team in the running but not yet assured of its first medal in 16 years, Nedoroscik threw off his goggles, walked over to the horse and started waving.

STEPHEN. NEDOROSCIK.

The routine that made the difference @USAGym‘s first Olympic medal in the men’s team final since 2008 🥉

📺: @NBCOlympics & @peacock#Olympic Games in Paris photo.twitter.com/NiDVBvxx12

— Team USA (@TeamUSA) July 29, 2024

The result: a score of 14.866, good for bronze for Team USA. It was the first team medal in gymnastics since 2008.

Thousands of miles and an ocean away, Randy Jepson watched and knew Nedoroscik would win the medal. About eight years ago, Nedoroscik made the equivalent of a cold call, e-mailing the Penn State gymnastics coach a video of him from high school. Despite being a junior Olympic champion, Nedoroscik had no college offers. His unique gymnastics goal understandably made him less appealing in a sport where few schools sponsor the sport and even fewer offer scholarships. But Penn State and Jepson have long been fond of their vaulting horse specialists; the school has produced 12 national champions in the event. He was intrigued, but Nedoroscik hadn’t yet been to campus — or at least Jepson didn’t think he had.

One day, while scrolling through social media, the coach saw a photo on Nedoroscik’s feed that showed some very familiar squirrels hanging out in a very familiar place.

“They were Penn State squirrels in the Penn State parking garage,” Jepson said with a laugh. Nedoroscik had come to State College to check out Penn State and its facilities, but he never told Jepson he was coming. Eventually, Jepson learned that was part of Nedoroscik’s quirky charm.

He is a delightful analytical nerd, an electrical engineer who enjoys solving (not trying, solving) a Rubik’s Cube in his spare time. He gets angry if it takes longer than 10 seconds. But he is also hilariously silly, quick to make fools of himself and the best kind of teammate. Accustomed to waiting to do his thing, Nedoroscik invests his free time and all his energy into cheering on his teammates.

He did it at Penn State, where he eventually won two national titles, and he’s doing it now, on the senior circuit. As Team USA made its way through the other five rotations in the team finals, Nedoroscik could be found in full warmup, hands over his mouth, cheering on his teammates.

“It’s not easy being a specialist,” Jepson said. “You have to wait and there’s a lot of pressure to perform. But Stephen is such a joy to be with. He’s a great, great team-mate.”

He’s also exceptionally good at the one thing he does, though his path to getting there has been bumpy. His last collegiate season was canceled by COVID, and his first shot at an Olympic berth ended disastrously. He fell on the first day of competition at the trials, finishing third and not making the team. He rebounded after Tokyo to win the 2021 world championship in pommel horse, but 2022 and 2023 have been pockmarked with as many lows as highs.

The analyst in Nedoroscik considered his circumstances and realized that he was more determined to win than to simply perform his routine. That was not how Jepson had taught him to do things.

“One thing at a time, that’s it,” Jepson said. So Nedoroscik went back to his roots, worrying only about completing his first Russian flop, an incredibly difficult skill but the first in his routine. From there he went to the second and so on, solving the knight with the same zeal he uses to solve the Rubik’s Cube.

Stephen Nedoroscik was the very last to play for Team USA on Monday. And it was worth the wait for the Americans. (Daniela Porcelli / Eurasia Sport Images / Getty Images)

The result is a man who remains calm despite the undue pressure. What Nedoroscik endured in the team final is not pretty. The luck of the draw—in this case, bad—put the U.S. first on the rings, meaning that if you were to roll counterclockwise around the competition floor, the pommel horse would be last. The lineups are also stacked. Three athletes compete on each apparatus, and all three scores count. They go from worst to best, meaning that Nedoroscik would be the last man on the final apparatus for the U.S.

The men’s team doesn’t keep score. When the announcers break the scores after each rotation, Frederick Richard and Nedoroscik cover their ears and shout “La la la la,” to block out the information. But the crowd tells you what you don’t want to know, and so do the routines. The United States hammered out routine after routine — eventually a perfect 18 for 18 — and the noise in a very pro-American crowd grew like a steady crescendo. Shouts of “USA” filled the Bercy Arena, and even if you didn’t know exactly what was going on, it was impossible not to know what was really going on.

By the time they got to the final rotation, they were ready to take home a medal. But they had to do the routines right to make sure of that. Paul Judah did it, as did Brody Malone, and then came Nedoroscik. The morning of the competition, he posted a video of a solved Rubik’s Cube to his Instagram. Done in 9.321 seconds.

“Good omen,” he wrote.

Back in State College, Jepson saw the video and thought the same thing. Then he sat down in his house, turned on the TV and watched as Nedoroscik started waving.

“He made that first Russian flop, and I said, ‘Oh, he’s got this,'” Jepson said. “He’s definitely got this.”

Nedoroscik continued to swing, dismounted and grabbed his glasses. He could see clearly, all the way to the bronze medal that eventually hung around his neck.

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(Top photo of Stephen Nedoroscik celebrating his pommel horse routine in Paris on Monday: James Long/USA Today)