Stephen Nedoroscik, Mass. native and Olympic pommel horse king, has seen the memes

When the U.S. males’s gymnastics crew received a bronze medal on the Olympics this week, all of it got here down to at least one man from Worcester: Stephen Nedoroscik, a Massachusetts native now referred to as Steve the pommel horse man.

Nedoroscik is a pommel horse specialist, which means he solely competes in certainly one of six occasions for crew USA. His routine in the course of the crew competitors cemented a medal for the U.S., their first in 16 years.

After his efficiency, he grew to become a nationwide hero and a social media sensation. There are TikTok movies about how there’s the entire crew, after which there’s Nedoroscik, the clutch pommel horse king.

“It’s loopy, simply the quantity of memes that there are,” Nedoroscik informed GBH’s Morning Version co-host Jeremy Siegel in a Zoom name from Paris. “My girlfriend has despatched to me so a lot of them. I imply, I simply couldn’t consider it that that grew to become a factor.”

There are additionally photos shared of him because the Clark Kent of gymnastics, shedding his glasses and going from a mild-mannered man on the sidelines to a pommel horse superhero.

“I positively do have problem seeing normally. That’s why once I do take them off and I’m ready for the decide to lift his hand, I’m actually squinting and searching and appears like I’m so critical,” he stated. “However truthfully, I simply attempt to see if he’s elevating his hand but.”

When he’s on the pommel horse, he’s doing it by really feel, he stated.

“After I’m really on the gear, I’m not essentially taking a look at something,” he stated. “What I see is what I really feel with my palms. They do all of that for me.”

He thinks about his specialty in an analytical manner. He’s {an electrical} engineer, a Rubik’s Dice fanatic and a online game lover.

He described overlaying two movies of himself on the pommel horse — one during which he nailed a selected ability, and one during which he fell — to isolate the variations.

“It’s actually sophisticated to explain it, since you take a look at how the middle of mass is rotating round an object,” Nedoroscik stated. “You’re grabbing onto a deal with that’s solely about an inch thick, and there’s so many locations throughout within the easiest factor on pommel horse the place you may mess up, and it takes about 10 years for a gymnast to get constant of the purpose of simply doing circles on the pommels.”

He’s certainly one of two Massachusetts residents on the crew: Frederick Richard, from Stoughton, can also be on the Bronze-winning crew.

“Area six is the area that Massachusetts is in. And for a lot of, a few years, individuals stated that it was the worst area for males’s gymnastics,” Nedoroscik stated. “So when me and Fred have been introduced on that crew, two guys from Massachusetts, a small state from a few small gyms, we simply checked out one another. We have been like, we’re going to go on the market and signify our state proud.”