Before it was his turn to take center stage at the Paris Olympic Games, Stephen Nedoroscik leaned back and closed his eyes.
But the bespectacled Olympian wasnāt snoozing.
Nedoroscik, whose speciality is pommel horse and whose routine would decide whether the US menās artistic gymnastics team would make it to the Olympic podium for the first time in 16 years, was tracing his steps in his head. He breathed slowly to lower his heart rate, he told .
When it was his turn, Nedoroscik ditched his glasses and Team USA jacket and headed to the pommel horse. And in a near-perfect 40-second routine of quickly swinging both legs around his body and flinging himself into a walking handstand, Nedoroscik secured the teamās bronze medal. His teammatesā reactions were as euphoric as they might have been if theyād won gold.
āI donāt know whatās happening, did we do it?ā he his teammates after they hoisted him into the air, triumphant.
Though they won together, itās Nedoroscik whoās broken out as the fan favorite, even with his limited performance time. Heās earning for the unassuming demeanor and similar specs he wears before losing both to become a confident pommel horse hero.
Nedoroscik, for his part, thinks the memes heās inspired are āawesome.ā
āIām representing people who wear glasses well,ā he said, beaming, in a Tuesday appearance on āToday.ā
Hereās what to know about Nedoroscik, the U.S. menās gymnastics teamās very own Superman.
He's Team USA's pommel horse pro
While teammates like Brody Malone and Fred Richard flit between events like rings and vault, Nedoroscik only performs on one apparatus: pommel horse. Heās the first American gymnast to make the Olympic team as a specialist in a single event, to his training gym, Evo Gymnastics in Sarasota, Florida.
He dropped the other events in artistic gymnastics seven year ago, he USA Gymnastics, after winning two Junior Olympic National titles in pommel horse and joining Penn Stateās menās gymnastics program.
Specializing has succeeded: Commentators that heās perhaps the best in the world at what he does.
Nedoroscik, it seems, takes himself less seriously than he does his sport.
āI go internationally and I see all the other (pommel) horse specialists. It seems to be a universal thing that weāre quirky people that are kind of just fun,ā he said.
He was a world champion before Paris
Nedoroscik and the US menās gymnastics team earned a bronze medal in Paris, but on another world stage, heās won gold.
At the 2021 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Kitakyushu, Japan, conditions were less than ideal for Nedoroscik to medal at all: The phenom had broken his hand.
It didnāt matter: Nedoroscik still came in first ā the first time the U.S. had ever a gold medal for pommel horse at a world championship.
Stateside, heās been crowned the US pommel horse champion four times, tying the record for most pommel horse wins, per .
The Paris Games are Nedoroscikās first Olympics ā he missed the chance in 2020 after a disappointing performance in the Olympic trials.
āI messed up,ā he CNN affiliate WBBH in Fort Myers, Florida, ahead of this yearās Games. āI felt the pressure and kind of crumbled under it.ā
But the blow didnāt keep him down for long. Nedoroscik decided to āredirect that energy immediately,ā get back in the gym and keep training. He followed up those disappointing trials with his thrilling performance at the world championships, and since then, heās kept on winning.
Heās a puzzle fiend
As if competing at the highest level of gymnastics werenāt enough, Nedoroscik is also an über-competitive puzzler. His personal record for solving a Rubikās Cube is 8.6 seconds.
He took time off from ācubing,ā though, after a particularly hard puzzle consumed his downtime. His gymnastics teammate Fred Richard turned him on to ākiller sudoku,ā a version of the puzzle that involves more math. Nedoroscik found a killer sudoku puzzle that claimed to be the āworldās hardest,ā and after 45 hours of puzzling, he became the 43rd person in the world to solve it.
The experience nearly ruined the Rubikās Cube for him, he said.
āI tried to get back into cubing, and it wasnāt the same,ā he USA Gymnastics ahead of the Olympics. āI was kind of lost.ā
His cubing slump ended along with the US menās gymnastics drought at the Olympics. He brought his trusty cube with him to Paris and solved it on the day of the team final in just over nine seconds.
āItās stress relief,ā he said on his Tuesday āTodayā appearance. āSometimes I make the excuse that itās good for wrist rehab, too.ā
He competes with an eye sensitivity
The specs are cool for Clark Kent comparisons, but without them, Nedoroscik wouldnāt be able to see his adoring crowd at the Olympics. Nedoroscik has , or crossed eyes, and has trouble seeing without them.
On āToday,ā while wearing host Hoda Kotbās borrowed Ray-Bans, Nedoroscik said that when heās up on the pommel horse without his glasses, he depends not on sight but feel.
āI donāt even really see when Iām doing my gymnastics,ā he said. āItās all in the hands. I can feel everything.ā
He hasnāt always competed with limited vision. Nedoroscik used to wear goggles on the pommel horse during his time at Penn State, but he in June that he āhadnāt really felt likeā wearing them on the Olympic stage.
He hinted that the new look may have had something to do with testing his own limits.
āSometimes, I like to push the boundaries,ā he said.
Pushing paid off in Paris. His kryptonite is not, it seems, the pressure of performing on the worldās biggest stage in sports.
Heāll have a brief break between the Olympics and his next venture: Swinging around the U.S. with Simone Biles and some of his menās gymnastics teammates on the . The pommel horse pro will take the stage beginning in September.