2024-08-01 06:30:02
When the U.S. men’s gymnastics team won a bronze medal at the Olympics this week, it all came down to one guy from Worcester: Stephen Nedoroscik, a Massachusetts native now known as Steve the pommel horse guy.
Nedoroscik is a pommel horse specialist, meaning he only competes in one of six events for team USA. His routine during the team competition cemented a medal for the U.S., their first in 16 years.
After his performance, he became a national hero and a social media sensation. There are TikTok videos about how there’s the whole team, and then there’s Nedoroscik, the clutch pommel horse king.
“It is crazy, just the amount of memes that there are,” Nedoroscik told GBH’s Morning Edition co-host Jeremy Siegel in a Zoom call from Paris. “My girlfriend has sent to me so many of them. I mean, I just couldn’t believe it that that became a thing.”
There are also images shared of him as the Clark Kent of gymnastics, shedding his glasses and going from a mild-mannered man on the sidelines to a pommel horse superhero.
“I definitely do have difficulty seeing in general. That’s why when I do take them off and I’m waiting for the judge to raise his hand, I’m really squinting and looking and looks like I’m so serious,” he said. “But honestly, I just try to see if he’s raising his hand yet.”
When he’s on the pommel horse, he’s doing it by feel, he said.
“When I’m actually on the equipment, I’m not necessarily looking at anything,” he said. “What I see is what I feel with my hands. They do all of that for me.”
He thinks about his specialty in an analytical way. He’s an electrical engineer, a Rubik’s Cube enthusiast and a video game lover.
He described overlaying two videos of himself on the pommel horse — one in which he nailed a specific skill, and one in which he fell — to isolate the differences.
“It’s really complicated to describe it, because you look at how the center of mass is rotating around an object,” Nedoroscik said. “You’re grabbing onto a handle that’s only about an inch thick, and there’s so many places during in the simplest element on pommel horse where you can mess up, and it takes about 10 years for a gymnast to get consistent of the point of just doing circles on the pommels.”
He’s one of two Massachusetts residents on the team: Frederick Richard, from Stoughton, is also on the Bronze-winning team.
“Region six is the region that Massachusetts is in. And for many, many years, people said that it was the worst region for men’s gymnastics,” Nedoroscik said. “So when me and Fred were announced on that team, two guys from Massachusetts, a small state from a couple of small gyms, we just looked at each other. We were like, we’re going to go out there and represent our state proud.”
