How push for difficulty helped Stanford gymnasts ascend to U.S. favorites

MINNEAPOLIS — Coming home from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the U.S. men’s gymnastics team brought back valuable experience but for the first time since 2000, no medals.

“It left a bitter taste in our mouths,” the team’s star, Brody Malone, said.

Back on campus that fall, Malone and his Stanford teammates decided to do something about it.

The problem was clear. In elite gymnastics, routines carry a “start value” based on its level of difficulty. That difficulty score is then added to an execution score to determine the final score.

In Tokyo, the Americans began with a collective start value at least four points lower than those of the sport’s big three — China, Japan and the Russian Olympic Committee. That means even with execution scores on par with the three favorites, the U.S. didn’t stand a chance.

In Palo Alto, where many of the Cardinal gymnasts harbor national team ambitions, they didn’t wait for directions.

“We made it our mission at Stanford: We’re going to be the ones that do this, that spearhead this,” Malone said. “And so that’s what we did.”

That Cardinal gymnasts’ commitment to raising their standards in the gym drove the school to become the country’s preeminent college program and a key national team feeder, something that will be on full display this weekend at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Minneapolis.

While much of the attention will focus on Simone Biles and the women’s competition taking place Friday and Sunday, Malone and five other current or former Stanford gymnasts are expected to be central to the men’s event on Thursday and Saturday.

Malone, a three-time U.S. all-around champion and high bar world champion, is the closest thing to a lock for this year’s Olympic team, while Asher Hong and Khoi Young each boast multiple world championships medals and played key roles in the Cardinal’s record-tying fifth consecutive NCAA team title in April.

Two other current Stanford gymnasts, Jeremy Bischoff and Colt Walker, are also in the mix, as is alum Curran Phillips, who now trains with Malone and several other top post-grads at EVO Gymnastics in Sarasota, Florida.

Malone described the Stanford student body as “a culture that breeds excellence,” which carries over to the men’s gymnastics team.

“We made it a goal to win a national championship, and we did everything in our power every day to do that,” he said. “It ended up working out for us, and then we also brought that attitude not just to the collegiate level, but also to the Team USA level.”

In a way, Stanford’s success has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, U.S. high-performance director Brett McClure said. As the team piles up NCAA titles, more national team-level gymnasts choose the program. That, in turn, puts less pressure on the Cardinal’s stars each week, allowing them to rest more during the season and work on bigger skills.

“So they have the entire first part of the season to work on that difficulty, because they can still win week in and week out at NCAA competitions,” McClure said.

The commitment to difficulty isn’t just a Stanford thing, to be sure. The U.S. program notably implemented a bonus system into domestic competition that helped soften the blow to a gymnast’s execution score when he was taking his lumps learning harder skills.

All the moves are starting to pay off.

Malone, with his Olympic experience, took a leadership role for the Cardinal and stepped up his game individually, winning the high bar world title in 2022 while also finishing fourth in the all-around. The U.S. team, however, still finished sixth.

One year later, the U.S. finally broke through — the team bronze medal was its first at a global championship since the 2014 worlds — though Malone wasn’t there to help.

A gnarly knee injury suffered at a March 2023 competition in Germany required three surgeries and nearly a year of rehab.

In his place, Hong, then 19, and Young, 20, led a youth movement with Michigan standout Fred Richard, 19, in Antwerp, Belgium.

With Malone, 24, now back in the mix, having emphatically held off Richard to win another U.S. all-around title earlier this month in Fort Worth, Texas, those four come into Minneapolis as favorites for the five-person Olympic team.

The all-around winner over both days at trials can earn an automatic spot on the team, so long as he’s also among the top three in three events — a feat Malone nearly achieved at nationals; he finished among the top six on every apparatus except floor exercise, though only his high bar and still rings broke the top three.

Young followed up his breakthrough 2023 season by winning the NCAA all-around crown in April, then placed third at the U.S. championships. Hong, meanwhile, won three individual event titles at the NCAAs but is coming off a rare off performance in Fort Worth that saw him finish 10th in the all-around.

Stanford coach Thom Glielmi is confident in both of his rising stars. The even-keeled Young has been consistently among the country’s best since last year. The higher-energy Hong has also been training well, Glielmi said, but was scored unexpectedly low throughout nationals.

“Gymnastics-wise I think he’s great, and he would help the team tremendously,” Glielmi said.

On the women’s side, Biles leads a historically deep field coming to Minneapolis. The 27-year-old is already the sport’s most decorated athlete, but she’s just one of four Olympic medalists among the field of 16. Five other gymnasts competing this weekend have won medals at the world championships.

Shilese Jones, who won all-around medals at the past two world championships, should be positioned to join Biles in Paris so long as she can show the shoulder injury that kept her out of nationals is better.

Pleasanton’s Tiana Sumanasekera, 16, will represent the Bay Area on the women’s side. She placed ninth at nationals earlier this month, but was third in the floor exercise there. That performance came one year after she won all-around gold at the Pan-American Championships in her senior team debut. Another Northern California native, Nola Matthews of Gilroy, was left off the roster for team trials after finishing 18th at nationals.

Also in the mix is Suni Lee, the reigning Olympic all-around champion and a Twin Cities native. After two seasons at Auburn, and then learning to manage not one but two kidney diseases, she appears to be rounding back into top form just in time to compete in front of her hometown fans.