Team USA gymnast Frederick Richard was born for this moment

Men’s gymnastics has all the time taken a back seat to women’s gymnastics, which commonly produces a slew of international champions from these United States. Now we have reached some extent where Black Girl Magic has turn into a thing in the game—from Dominque Dawes in 1992 and Gabby Douglass in 2012, to the incomparable Simone Biles since 2016—while the boys have remained largely unknown and without color.

Frederick Richard was born for this moment.

At just 20, he finds his life’s purpose and his childhood dream intersecting in Paris, with growing anticipation for one other crossover on the Olympics in Los Angeles in 4 years. By then, he’ll be well on his strategy to his mission, a task some athletes might shrink back from, but one he embraces with enthusiasm.

“I want to be the Michael Jordan of gymnastics,” Richard said. he told USA Today before he involves Paris and shows himself. “The one who changes it when he leaves and makes it 20 times bigger and respected. That’s one of my big goals and I’ll be in this sport for another 10 years.”

On Monday, he helped the U.S. men’s gymnastics team win its first Olympic medal (bronze) in 16 years, and on Wednesday he qualified for the all-around. He hopes his star power will attract more black and brown faces than the few he met while climbing. “I grew up wishing my whole life that there were black gymnasts in men’s sports that I could look up to,” he said. he told The Boston Globe after Team USA finished third within the team competition.

Richard is well-positioned to turn into the Black Pied Piper within the footsteps of golf’s Tiger Woods and tennis’ Williams sisters. As @FrederickFlips, he has nearly one million followers combined on Instagram and TikTok, where he posts a gradual stream of content that features friendly competitions against his fellow athletes from the University of Michigan. Some of the videos include warnings against attempting to do these items yourself because you might break your neck.

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Guys who’re willing to take that risk in football are less more likely to select gymnastics as their sport. But Richard has been into flips since he was a bit kid who frightened his parents to death with all of the flips and such. “He was doing handstands from a very young age; I mean, he was literally doing it in his crib by the time he was less than two years old,” his mother says. he told NBC Boston. He began training on the age of 4 and has never given one other sport a moment’s notice. His passion for gymnastics only grew when he needed to miss a yr on the age of 14 as a result of a stress fracture in his spine. He returned with a brand new dedication to becoming an Olympian.

Richard crushed raisins in flour as a teenager. “You grow up in a gym and if you’re lucky, there are three black kids out of hundreds, and it’s weird,” he said he said in June“I had a great childhood, but when you feel out of place, you want to look up to someone who looks like you, but there really wasn’t anyone who won those medals at the Olympics. So now I feel like it’s an opportunity I have to provide comfort to these other kids.”

He attacks the game with the energy and joy of a high-spirited schoolboy, the type we see bouncing around playgrounds and other public spaces once they’re not bouncing at home. Gymnastics offers an important outlet for feats of strength, agility and suppleness, and Richard is an important ambassador. I even have little doubt that his performance in Paris will encourage more black boys to try their hand on the gym.

Richard’s athletic ability is clear. But like many elite male gymnasts, his height may match against him within the mainstream sports that attract most of our top athletes. He is 5 feet 5 inches tall, which is typical for average gymnastHis emergence last yr — because the youngest American ever to win an all-around medal on the world championships — and his dominance as a sophomore at Michigan — winning NCAA all-around, parallel bars and high bar titles — should encourage boys of comparable stature.

Making men’s gymnastics as popular as women’s is a tall order and maybe unattainable. But he is decided to make the game greater. He will join Biles on her Gold Over America Tour (GOAT) after the Paris Games and returning to Michigan to defend his titles. Everything is developing as he planned/dreamed.

“I got this opportunity because of (gymnastics) and I want to make these things happen for other people,” Richard said. before leaving for Paris“And I would like the game I really like to get the respect it deserves.

If he never gets there, it actually won’t be because he didn’t try.