(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE Baltimore Orioles 4, Washington Nationals 1 Cleveland Guardians 6, Chicago Cubs 1 NY Mets 9, Oakland Athletics 1
AMERICAN LEAGUE Kansas City Royals 4, Minnesota Twins 1 Texas Rangers 9, Boston Red Sox 7 Detroit Tigers 3, Seattle Mariners 2 Houston Astros 2, Tampa Bay Rays 1 NY Yankees 10, Chicago White Sox 2 Toronto Blue Jays 9, LA Angels 2
NATIONAL LEAGUE Arizona Diamondbacks 11, Colorado Rockies 4 San Diego Padres 8, Pittsburgh Pirates 2 Philadelphia Phillies 9, Miami Marlins 5 Cincinnati Reds 9, St. Louis Cardinals 2 Milwaukee Brewers 5, LA Dodgers 4 Atlanta Braves 13, San Francisco Giants 2
(NEW YORK) — Nearly one week into the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Team USA has a breakout star.
Stephen Nedoroscik, a 25-year-old pommel horse “specialist” on the U.S. men’s gymnastics team, was crucial in helping his team bring home a bronze medal in Paris, the men’s team’s first Olympic medal in 16 years.
In the final rotation of the team competition on July 29, Nedoroscik scored high enough, 14.866, in his only rotation for the team event to put the U.S. men in third place in the final standings.
“I just stayed in the moment for the whole routine, hearing [my teammates] just cheer me on the whole time,” Nedoroscik told ABC News Tuesday of his medal-winning routine. “By the time I got to the dismount, I thought to myself …, ‘If I put this dismount up and stick the landing, we get a team medal.’ So, literally, as I’m in the air, falling to my feet, you can see the smile already coming to my face, and, man, was that a moment I’ll never forget.”
Here are four things to know about Nedoroscik:
1. He has become known as ‘Mr. Pommel Horse’
Nedoroscik’s skill on the pommel horse, a difficult event that requires extraordinary strength and coordination, has earned him nicknames including “Mr. Pommel Horse,” and “pommel horse guy.”
After completing his 40-second pommel horse routine twice in the team competition, Nedoroscik will perform it again on Saturday, where he’ll have a chance to win an individual gold medal in the pommel horse final.
Nedoroscik told the Washington Post he knew there would be criticism of him only competing in pommel horse, and not the other five apparatuses, and he was prepared.
“I was completely aware of it,” Nedoroscik said. “I really wanted to make the Olympic team, and I knew that there was going to be backlash to it. I do one event compared to these guys that are phenomenal all-arounders. And I am a phenomenal horse guy. But it’s hard to fit on a five-guy team.”
According to his USA Gymnastics biography, Nedoroscik, the current U.S. pommel horse champion, is tied for the most U.S. pommel horse titles in history, at four.
He is also a past world pommel horse champion.
2. He competes with limited vision
Nedoroscik has also gained the nickname “Clark Kent” for the way he takes his glasses off when he competes, a la Superman.
The 25-year-old has shared on TiKTok that he has an eye condition called strabismus, or crossed eyes, which is a misalignment of the eyes that can lead to vision problems, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
He has also said previously that he has coloboma, an eye condition that people are born with in which a part of the tissue that composes the eye is missing, according to the National Eye Institute.
While Nedoroscik used to wear prescription goggles when he competed, he now competes without goggles or glasses.
“I don’t think I actually use my eyes on pommel horse,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s all feeling. I see with my hands.”
3. He is a Rubik’s Cube pro
The pommel horse is not Nedoroscik’s only talent.
Nedoroscik is also a pro at completing the Rubik’s Cube.
Just before competing in the team all-around competition, Nedoroscik posted on social media that he finished a Rubik’s Cube in just over nine seconds.
After the competition, Nedoroscik showed his skill was not a fluke, completing a Rubik’s Cube again in record speed for ABC News’ Good Morning America.
“Where I go the cube go,” he commented beneath a video of the moment on Instagram.
4. Nedoroscik and his girlfriend were both gymnasts at Penn State
Nedoroscik, who originally hails from Massachusetts, graduated from Penn State University in 2020.
He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, according to his USA Gymnastics bio.
Nedoroscik’s girlfriend, Tess McCracken, was also a gymnast at Penn State, according to her Instagram account.
(LONDON) — An Olympic athlete has had his finger amputated after he suffered an injury just so he can play in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Just two weeks ago, Matthew Dawson, a 30-year-old hockey player from Australia, suffered a badly broken finger on his right-hand during a team training session in Perth, Australia, and, after consulting with doctors, he found out the injury would take months to recover from and that he would miss out on the opportunity to play in his third Olympic Games.
But instead of opting for a long recovery, Dawson made a decision that would shock his teammates and has already made headlines around the world. He decided to amputate his finger so that he could compete in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
“There was a bit of shock within the team,” said Dawson’s teammate, Aran Zalewski, in an interview in Paris in the run up to the opening ceremony on Friday evening. “We didn’t really know what to think. And then we heard that he went to the hospital and chopped his finger off, which was pretty interesting because I know people would give an arm and a leg and even a little bit of finger to be here sometimes.”
“When you’ve spent a lifetime of choice and sacrifice to come and compete at the highest level, I think for him it was an easy decision,” Zalewski continued. “We’ve got his back. We’re fully supportive of his decision. We played a game [on Monday] and he seems absolutely fine. It’s great to see that his finger is going to be all right and he’ll be able to play with us throughout the tournament.”
Dawson, who underwent surgery on his right hip, a month after the Commonwealth Games in 2018, has had a long list of injuries during his career, including suffering a fractured eye socket in Feb. 2018 in a training accident, causing him to miss the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia the following month.
Dawson took up hockey when he was 8-years-old after his sister gave up netball and his parents signed her up for the local hockey team.
“As little brothers tend to do, I tagged along and watched my sister play hockey over the next couple of years,” Dawson explained in an interview in Nov. 2018.
Dawson is now set to be a three-time Olympian after competing in 2016 and 2020, where he won a silver medal with his squad after losing to Belgium on penalties. He is also a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medalist in 2018 and 2022 and has two Hockey World Cup appearances under his belt where he came in third with his team in 2018 and fourth in 2023.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE Miami Marlins 6, Baltimore Orioles 3 N.Y. Mets 12, N.Y. Yankees 3 Minnesota Twins 5, Philadelphia Phillies 4 Arizona Diamondbacks 8, Kansas City Royals 6 Colorado Rockies 20, Boston Red Sox 7
AMERICAN LEAGUE Cleveland Guardians 2, Detroit Tigers 1 L.A. Angels 2, Seattle Mariners 1 Toronto Blue Jays 6, Tampa Bay Rays 3 Texas Rangers 10, Chicago White Sox 2 Houston Astros 8, Oakland Athletics 1
NATIONAL LEAGUE Cincinnati Reds 9, Atlanta Braves 4 (Gm 1 Doubleheader, Gm 2 PPD) San Diego Padres 12, Washington Nationals 3 Pittsburgh Pirates 5, St. Louis Cardinals 0 Milwaukee Brewers 3, Chicago Cubs 2 San Francisco Giants 8, Los Angeles Dodgers 3