By Chrös McDougall
MINNEAPOLIS — With a visit to Paris next month, former Stanford student Brody Malone has shown he's ready for his second Olympics. Meanwhile, current Cardinal stars Asher Hong and Khoi Young still have a ways to go to secure their spots after the primary night of U.S. Olympic gymnastics team trials Thursday in Minneapolis.
Malone, a 10-time NCAA champion during his time within the Bay Area, finished second on the primary of two days of competition at Target Center, a half-point behind Fred Richard. Another performance like Sunday's should all but secure him a spot on the five-man U.S. team.
Neither Hong nor Young, the leaders of the Cardinal team that won its fifth consecutive NCAA title this spring, had a similarly convincing performance, with Hong in fifth place on the halfway point and Young a distant twelfth.
Two other members of Stanford's 2024 NCAA championship team, Colt Walker and Jeremy Bischoff, finished tenth and eleventh, respectively, while Cardinal graduate Curran Phillips took first place on his primary apparatus, parallel bars, which could still give him a likelihood at a spot on the team.
The gymnasts can be back on the Target Center on Saturday afternoon.
“The big picture is we have to be there,” Stanford coach Thom Glielmi said. “You can't expect them to go into automatic mode. You have to be here and compete.”
Malone was competing in just his third all-around competition since a serious knee injury nearly ended his profession last 12 months. The first two were on the U.S. Championships 4 weeks ago in Fort Worth, Texas, where he led each nights and claimed his third national title.
The 24-year-old from Rockmart, Georgia, seemed to be on his technique to his third all-around victory in front of an enthusiastic crowd at Target Center. On an evening that saw several gymnasts go wild, Malone remained stone-faced as he earned early points on vault, parallel bars and high bar.
Next up, nevertheless, was floor exercise, the last event Malone competed in after his injury. Malone was still finding his feet there, and a rating of 13.75 put him eighth in that event. He placed seventh on the pommel horse before ending strongly on the rings. That gave Richard, the reigning World Championship all-around bronze medalist, enough room to take the lead within the fifth round.
Provided there is no such thing as a drop in performance on Saturday, each must have likelihood of creating the Olympic team. The winner of the all-round competitions routinely gets a spot, provided he can be in the highest three on three individual apparatus. Malone got here second on the high bar and vault and third on the rings. Richard leads on the high bar and floor and is third on the parallel bars.
Aside from the possible automatic berth, the U.S. team will otherwise be chosen largely through simulations to find out the highest-scoring group for the Olympic team final in Paris.
That may very well be bad news for Young, the reigning NCAA champion. After his breakout 2023 season that saw him win three medals on the world championships, the 21-year-old from Bowie, Maryland, appeared to solidify his Olympic credentials with a third-place finish on the nationals.
His performance on Thursday undid much of that.
Starting together with his weakest discipline, rings, didn't help him, and even one of the best jump of the night within the second round didn't help him. As the evening went on, Young continued to slip down the rankings, until in the ultimate round, every little thing fell apart in his other specialty discipline. Young fell twice on the pommel horse and finished the evening with a rating of 79.6.
That hasn't been the case since last October, when he won silver medals in equestrian and show jumping on the World Championships while helping the U.S. team to the bronze medal.
“I've never seen such a routine in training, let alone in a competition,” said Glielmi. “It was very, very untypical.”
It was a job reversal of sorts, as in Fort Worth it was Hong who struggled to complete tenth, a 12 months after winning the national championship. On Thursday, the 20-year-old from Tomball, Texas, was mostly solid, scoring 83.7 points. His best performance got here on rings, where he placed second.
“Today he mostly managed six out of six,” said Glielmi.
Hong, long a rising star in U.S. men's gymnastics, won three events on the recent NCAA championships, and Glielmi said his overall difficulty level could be an asset to a U.S. team in Paris.
Competition in Minneapolis continues on Friday with the beginning of the ladies's competition, featuring 4 returning Olympians and five other World Championship medalists in one of the vital competitive women's events in recent history.
image credit : www.mercurynews.com