Paris isn’t just the U.S. women’s gymnastics team’s redemption tour. It’s gymnast Brody Malone’s redemption tour, too.
After a disappointing finish on the high bar at the Tokyo Olympics and a devastating knee injury last March that could have ended his gymnastics career, Malone is looking to — at the very least — bring home the gold on his best event.
The U.S. men’s gymnastics team hasn’t taken home an Olympic medal since 2008, and this year’s group is determined to be the first in 16 years to make it to the podium.
A minor mistake in Tokyo had meant finished fourth on the high bar, which “leaves a really bad taste in your mouth,” he said.
Malone, 24, went on to win the bronze at the World Championships later that year and snagged the gold at the same competition the following year, but “there’s just a difference between a world medal and an Olympic medal. So that’s what I want,” he said.
The slip of a hand on the high bar at the DTB Cup in Germany in March 2023 thrust Malone’s dreams of a second Olympic appearance and an Olympic medal into question.
He “landed funky” off his dismount and dislocated his knee. Weeks later, an MRI showed he had torn multiple ligaments in his knee and fractured part of his tibia.
Three operations and over a year of intensive training and rehab later (he had to relearn how to walk), Malone, against all odds, is making his Olympic return on all six apparatuses.
“It was always in the plans to, you know, try to make a comeback,” Malone said. “It was just whether or not I was going to be able to do floor and vault,” which are the two most strenuous events on the knees.
It was the injury that pushed Malone toward Paris, calling it a “huge motivator” for him to make it back to the Olympics.
“You never really know how bad you want something until you have it taken away from you,” Malone said. “And that is exactly how this ended up working out.”
It wasn’t without a lot of hard work, though. There were days, Malone said, when he didn’t want to go to the gym to train, frustrated with being on crutches, coming off weeks of bed rest.
“But it’s important to have the perspective that I don’t have to do this — I get to do this,” Malone said. He used that thinking to flip his mindset, instead focusing on small goals he could achieve in the gym day to day.
“That’s what kept me going,” he said. “It’s just, like, setting little goals every single day that you know you can achieve and then achieving those goals, and that keeps you going towards the end.”
All that work has built up to the Paris Olympics, which kick off July 26. Malone said his knee is “doing really, really well,” but he said he’s not planning any upgrades for the Games. Instead, he’s going to stick to the routines he did at U.S. Olympic Team Trials and “just try to do them as cleanly as possible.”
Gunning for gold in Paris
Malone is something of the big brother of the 2024 team, the only one of the five members who has been to the Olympics before.
He’s happy to take on that role, he said. Even though he didn’t medal in Tokyo, he performed well and knows the pressure of being at the Olympics, so he wants to be “the guy to go to” for his teammates, just like three-time Olympian Sam Mikulak was for him in Tokyo.
“Anything that I can, you know, bring to them, as far as what it’s like to compete in an Olympic Games, what, like, mental approaches to take or anything like that. That’s my role on the team,” Malone said.
Malone said he’s super excited to hit the mat with Asher Hong, a Stanford teammate who Malone said is “really fun” in competition, and pommel horse star Stephen Nedoroscik, who Malone said is “super goofy” and “keeps it light.”
Nedoroscik’s lighthearted attitude has encouraged Malone, a self-described “super focused guy” who likes “to be in my own bubble, in my own space and doing my own thing,” to have a little more fun on the mat. He admitted he has started cracking some jokes of his own, but not too many.
Malone has to stay focused if he wants to keep up with Daiki Hashimoto, a Japanese gymnast who won the gold in the all-around in Tokyo and specializes in high bar like Malone. He’s someone Malone looks up to and respects but whom he also wants to beat.
Malone said he even had his coach post pictures of Hashimoto around the gym to encourage him to “get my butt in gear and work hard.”
What’s next for Malone after Paris? He has no idea. He said he’s “playing around with the idea of coming back for 2025 worlds,” and the Los Angeles Games in 2028 aren’t off the table, but he also has a wedding to plan for next year, “so there’s a lot of life outside of gymnastics happening for me.”
But for the next few weeks, it’s all about the Paris Games.
“As long as we go out there and do everything in our power, like do our best gymnastics and put on our best showing, I’m going to be happy with the outcome,” Malone said, adding that the goal is still to medal.
Malone said he prefers to keep his mind in the present and focus on the process, but “making a high bar final and winning a medal on high bar, that would be the cherry on top.”