How Brody Malone returned to form to power USA to Olympic bronze

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PARIS — Brody Malone didn’t spend much time reliving his disastrous performance in Saturday’s qualifying round at the 2024 Paris Olympics, nor much energy analyzing his mistakes.

“You’ve just got to forget about it,” he said. On to the next one.

And in that next one, Malone was back to himself.

In a team final where the U.S. men’s gymnastics team had no major mistakes, boosting them to a first Olympic medal in men’s gymnastics since 2008, it was Malone’s resurgence that played the most significant role. The Americans improved their score from qualifying by 4.56 points. Malone, the only returning Olympian on the team, improved his personal score on five events by 4.07.

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“The first night was a fluke for Brody. That’s not who he is,” USA Gymnastics men’s high performance director Brett McClure said. “I really believed I didn’t need to say anything to him other than, ‘Let’s get in this. Let’s get in this competition.’ And he was like, ‘Absolutely.’ He turned it around like he always does.”

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Malone’s performance Saturday was so poor, so shocking and so uncharacteristic that he felt obligated to apologize to his teammates afterwards. He arrived in Paris with a realistic shot at earning an individual medal. Instead, he fell four times − including twice on his best event, high bar − and failed to even qualify for the 24-person all-around final.

“I mean, that was probably one of the worst meets of my life,” the Stanford product said. “But I knew that I had the capability to go out and hit routines, so I just kind of set my mind right and went out there and did it for the guys today.”

Syque Caesar, who coaches Malone, said they had a conversation after Saturday to hit the reset button. The reigning U.S. champion declined to reveal the details of that conversation, saying some of what they talked about was “pretty personal,” but he said it helped.

Caesar suspects that, as the only returning member of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic team, Malone might have tried to put too much pressure on his shoulders − spent too much time worrying about “the little things.” He was the one who started the team’s group chat after Olympic trials, someone who was clearly mindful of team camaraderie and togetherness outside of the gym.

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“You have to take care of yourself to be a good teammate, and he was a little too selfless,” Caesar said. “And I think his performance (Saturday) didn’t reflect how much of a team player he wanted to be.”

Sam Mikulak, a 2021 teammate who is now another one of his coaches, thought Malone “just needed some rest.”

“There’s so many variables that I can go into,” Mikulak continued, “but honestly, I think he just needed a little more time to acclimate himself.”

All of that − and Malone’s incredible return from a gruesome injury earlier this year − just made Monday’s performance more special. Malone said that, as a former college gymnast on a team filled with current and former college gymnasts, they just tried to treat it as NCAA championships − just another competition.

The result was a much improved vault, a complete turnaround on high bar and a penultimate pommel horse routine that left him pumping his fists in celebration.

“That Brody you saw out there is the Brody that we all know,” Caesar said. “So I’m glad it came together the moment it needed to come together.”

Although Malone did not qualify for any individual finals, he said he will absolutely stick around in Paris to cheer for his teammates.

McClure, who oversees the men’s program, said his next task is to convince the 24-year-old Malone to also stick around for the next Summer Games, in 2028 in Los Angeles.

“Not off the table yet,” Malone said. “We’ll see.”

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.