Team USA’s Paul Juda made his Olympics debut at the 2024 Paris Games. Here’s what you need to know.
The men's gymnastics team for the United States is hoping to break a 16-year drought and bring home heir first team medal since 2008 on Monday.
The athletes looking to break that stretch include Frederick Richard, Brody Malone, Paul Juda, Asher Hong and Stephen Nedoroscik. In men's gymnastics, six apparatus medals are awarded, in addition to the team and all-around medals, for a total of eight.
The U.S. arrived in Paris hoping to earn a team medal at the Olympics for the first time since a bronze in Beijing 16 years ago. While that certainly remains on the table, Richard & Co. will need to be significantly better going forward after pommel horse specialist Stephen Nedoroscik became the only American to make an apparatus final.
Brody Malone, who returned from a catastrophic leg injury in March 2023 to win the U.S. Championships in early June and make his second Olympic team, fell once on pommel horse and twice on high bar.
His second miscue on high bar — a high-risk, high-reward event in which Malone won gold at the 2022 world championships — forced the Americans to use Asher Hong's 12.600, one of the reasons the U.S. ended up 3.322 behind Britain.
“It was definitely not perfect,” U.S. high-performance director Brett McClure said. “And it was a few too many mistakes. I feel leading into team finals we need to clean some things up.”
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Paris 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics
Watch all the action from the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games live on Peacock
The American men — hoping to repeat the bronze they won at the world championships last fall — weren't nearly as sharp in front of an audience that included U.S. First Lady Jill Biden, who clapped along with American star Frederick Richard's floor routine and posed for pictures with a somewhat subdued team afterward.
While the top of the podium figures to be a duel between superpowers China and Japan, the race for bronze is wide open. The Japanese settled for silver at home in Tokyo in 2021, losing to the Russians by just over a tenth of a point in a close final while China took bronze a little further back.
The United States, Great Britain and Ukraine are expected to content for a final spot on the podium and the bronze medal.
The men's gymnastics team final will air live on NBC at 11:30 a.m. ET, on Peacock and is available at the link here.
