There are six events in men's gymnastics, each designed to test a different combination of an athlete's strength, balance and technique.
Steven Nedorosik has only competed in one of those events, but it could be what qualifies him for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
In a sport that typically rewards all-around talent, the 25-year-old Nedorosik has taken the exact opposite approach heading into this week's U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials in Minneapolis. Since his late high school years, he has competed exclusively on the pommel horse, emerging as one of the best in the world on that event at the expense of the other five events.
While other gymnasts, like Brodie Malone and Frederick Richard, have the leeway to overcome mistakes during competition, Nedrosik's nighttime routine will be centered on his 45-second pommel horse routine. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but Nedrosik has one thing going for him: a signature move. And it's paid off. In the past eight years, the Massachusetts native has won two NCAA titles, four U.S. national championships and the 2021 world championships, all on pommel horse.
“Someone like Stephen is a real anomaly,” said Randy Jepson, who coached Nedorosik at Penn State. “You don't see a lot of people that stand out and are number one in the world.”
Nedorosic's exceptional ability and obvious limitations make him something of a wild card at this week's trials to determine the five members of the men's Olympic team. In the Olympic team final, three athletes from each country compete on each apparatus, and all three points count. Nedorosic won't be able to contribute in five of those events, but he can produce a score in the sixth that few athletes in the world can match.
“It's a little complicated,” Nedorosic said of a possible Olympic appearance, “but I think I'm in a pretty good spot given where things are right now. Hopefully I can get to the Olympic Trials and have a couple more good performances. At that point, it all spins out of control. Hopefully.”
Why is the pommel horse difficult?
Nedorosic is one of three specialists at the Olympic Trials and one of two who specialize in the notoriously difficult pommel horse event, which is sometimes compared to gymnastics' balance beam. The U.S. has historically struggled at the event, and many all-around athletes dread it. Jepson likened the technical requirements of the event to playing a round of golf on 10-foot-wide fairways and getting the ball on the green every time.
“It's really difficult because you're dealing with so many different balance issues and constant movement,” he said. “So as the skill level increases, it becomes really, really important to maintain balance within the movement without disrupting or imperfecting the fluidity of the movement.”
But Nedorosic has always had a love for the pommel horse. As a child, she competed in all sorts of events and excelled on the parallel bars, and would often bring a pommel horse, known colloquially as “the mushroom,” into her living room to show off her skills to family and friends.
When he was 11 or 12, he decided to start practicing early in the morning, spending an hour trying to complete a simple loop on a single pommel horse. After a year or so, he was completing more consecutive loops than most of the guys going to college. By the time he was 15, his dad had bought an old 1980s pommel horse at an auction and set it up in the backyard.
“So once I got it, the family would come over and I'd go and show them something about it,” Nedorosic said.
Why Nedorosic focused all his energy on one event
His backyard training helped Nedrosik win consecutive pommel horse titles at the Junior Olympic National Championships, which is what caught the eye of Coach Jepson at Penn State. Nedrosik said he had planned to add other events to his competitive repertoire as a freshman, but quickly realized that pommel horse was his path to competition. So he focused on the event, won a national title, and hasn't looked back since.
“It was a road that no one had traveled before,” he says. “I had no idea what to expect.”
After earning a degree in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University, Nedorosic may have been best known for the non-prescription goggles he wore during competitions, a gift from a teammate that he said was more out of superstition than any attempt to improve his eyesight. But by 2019, he had made the U.S. national team. And in 2021, after missing out on a spot on the Tokyo Olympic team, he became the first U.S. gymnast to win the pommel horse at a world championships. (Peter Widmar won Olympic gold on the event in 1984.)
Nedorosik said competing as a single-event specialist comes with its own challenges: At last month's U.S. Championships, for example, he had to wait until after his warm-up and 140-plus routine before attempting his single turn on the pommel horse.
It also comes with a lot of pressure and, for USA Gymnastics officials, some risk.
Adding experts to the Olympics
If Nedorosic performs flawlessly, he could score more than 15,000 points and potentially add a point or two to his team's score, lifting it above its rivals. But if he fails, the team essentially runs the risk of being short athlete in the event of an injury, but without the rewards afterward. (In Tokyo, teams were allowed only four athletes, but countries could also bring a “plus one” athlete to compete only in individual events; the U.S. brought in another pommel horse specialist, Alec Yoder.)
“If you want to win, you've got to get the best score, and that might mean thinking a little bit outside the box and taking a little bit of risk,” Jepson explained. “The fact that he's a guy who's only going to play one event and can make a big difference, I think that's really key. And when you look at the selection process, a guy like that could be selected, but he's got to be worthy.”
The U.S. is not the only country considering selecting experts ahead of an Olympic team event, and Nedorosic, if selected, would not be alone: Great Britain has long relied on pommel horse specialists, most recently Max Whitlock, and China is also expected to send a rings expert in Paris.
But ultimately, it's a question of risk and reward. And Nedorosic knows all he can do is try to influence that equation with a consistent performance this week in Minneapolis, ideally matching or surpassing his score at U.S. Championships earlier this summer, where he finished nearly two points higher on both pommel horse routines than any other top-flight member of the U.S. team.
“It looks like I have a chance,” Nedorosic said. “I actually think I have a pretty good chance of making that team.”
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.