When the sixth and final rotation of the United States men's gymnastics Olympic trials ended, the wait began.
Even Brody Malone, the reigning U.S. all-around champion and a Tokyo Olympian, said his heart was racing as officials calculated which gymnasts had secured their tickets to Paris on Saturday.
But Frederick Richard could sit easy on the comfy white couches on the Target Center floor. He knew his performance at the trials had already booked him a spot on the plane. No waiting for numbers to be crunched, no fretting over deliberations.
Richard's first-place finish in the two-day all-around competition with a score of 170.500, plus his top-three finishes in three of the six events, earned him an "autolock" spot on the Olympic team. With each high score, Richard pumped his fists — or pumped up the crowd.
"I'm going to enjoy [the pressure of Paris]," said Richard, who competes at the University of Michigan. "I'm 20 years old, and the world is watching, and I'm going to give them something to be entertained by."
A mathematical formula determined the rest of the team. Asher Hong, Brody Malone, Paul Juda and Stephen Nedoroscik rounded out the squad. Shane Wiskus and Khoi Young will travel to Paris as alternates.
Wiskus, a Spring Park native and University of Minnesota alum, finished third in the all-around to the delight of the hometown crowd and spectators in "Shane Wiskus Fan Club" T-shirts. A 2020 Tokyo Olympian, Wiskus said he "felt the Minnesota love." His performance showed it. Yet his all-around consistency was outweighed by other gymnasts' higher scores in individual events.
This often-referenced formula came about after athletes and coaches requested more consistent benchmarks for making the team, said men's program director Brett McClure. The math considered the gymnasts' performance at the trials and this summer's U.S. Championships. But it was not as clear-cut as taking the top five all-around performers, plus alternates.
In the team event in Paris, each nation will choose three gymnasts to compete on each apparatus, mixing and combining their rosters to max out the difficulty of their routines and their potential scores.
If the formula was a puzzle, Wiskus' pieces just didn't fit.
That's how a specialist like Stephen Nedoroscik fit into the picture. The Penn State alum is a world champion on pommel horse, a historically weak event for the U.S. men's team. So, by bringing Nedoroscik, the Americans have a greater chance of medaling in the individual event and covering a weak spot in the team event.
"I really try not to [crunch the numbers]," said Nedoroscik, who added that his cat won't be happy he is headed to Paris. "I didn't quite look at the spreadsheet or anything like that, but I had a good idea that there was a good chance they could take a horse guy if I did a good job."
Two members of last year's bronze-medal winning world championships team, Young and Yul Moldauer, had shaky trials performances. Young's difficult vault and third-place all-around finish at the U.S. championships helped him secure an alternate spot.
In the trials all-around standings, Malone finished second (170.300), bouncing back after falling on high bar in Saturday's first rotation. Malone, who suffered a severe leg injury in March 2023 that required three surgeries, heads to his second Olympics, like Wiskus.
"With everything that I've gone through with my leg, it's been a battle to get back to where I'm at," Malone said. "I constantly leaned on God and my teammates and my coaches."
Hong, a 20-year-old who competes at Stanford, hung behind Richard in second for most of the night until a fall on pommel horse knocked him to fifth. Still, the night's best scores on vault, rings and parallel bars worked in Hong's favor.
Juda, another University of Michigan gymnast, finished fourth, behind Wiskus. Juda also finished behind Wiskus at U.S. championships, but has stronger scores in certain apparatuses of need for the team.
At the beginning of the year, Juda had written out his goals on a whiteboard. On it: Olympian. It's a "massive checkmark," Juda said through tears.
After his last two rotations, on floor and on rings, Donnell Whittenburg, 29, the oldest gymnast of the field who was a member of five world championships teams but never competed at the Olympics, earned a standing ovation from the crowd.
The U.S. men's gymnastics team will look to earn its first Olympic medal since 2008 at the Paris Games, where the artistic gymnastics competition is from July 27 to Aug. 5. McClure said he believed the gymnasts had increased their difficulty level enough since Tokyo to contend for a team medal in Paris.
