PARIS, France — Brody Malone has spent the last 16 months defying the odds, improbably coming back from a catastrophic right knee injury in the spring of 2023 to reach the Olympics for a second time.
When the 24-year-old won his third national title in June, he looked every bit the star the Americans envisioned when he became the standard-bearer for the men's program three years ago.
Yet Malone has been around long enough to know that gymnastics is not a sport where progress is linear. If he needed a reminder, it came during team qualifying Saturday, when the sport that has given Malone so much took away an opportunity to compete in the all-around final.
Malone fell twice on high bar — where he was the 2022 world champion — and once on pommel horse. Throw in an ill-timed slip on floor exercise, and all the momentum and good vibes Malone had generated during his remarkable return vanished.
Afterward, Malone offered no excuses. He apologized to his four teammates and shook his head at how a day that began with so much promise slipped away.
“I feel like I'm in good shape,” Malone said. “But I've just got to put the routines together."
Malone is hardly the only one. The U.S. came to Paris believing it could return to the medal stand at the Games for the first time since 2008. Missteps both little and big kept cropping up. Save for Paul Juda's steady performance while serving as the leadoff on five of the six events, there was little consistency to go around.
A chance at redemption awaits in the team final Monday night, where Malone and the Americans are hoping to move past a sloppy fifth-place finish.
While the top of the podium figures to be a duel between superpowers China and Japan, the race for bronze is wide open. It's a race Malone can help the U.S. win if he can recover the form he showed at U.S. Championships, when he sent a message to rising star Frederick Richard and everyone else that when he is right, he's as good any American out there.
Malone is by far the most experienced athlete on the five-man U.S. team. He has taken on the role of de facto captain, and while he wasn't at his best during qualifying, he made sure to tell his teammates to drink in the moment, as difficult as it might have been at times.
“I was like ‘Congratulations, you guys are officially Olympians,’” Malone said.
The way forward, however, may be for the Americans to suffer a bout of temporary amnesia during the finals.
“Treat it like the first day of NCAA championships,” said Malone, who won a pair of NCAA all-around titles at Stanford. “The first day is always the day to get the kinks out, get the nerves out.”
The nerves will need to be out if the U.S. wants to navigate the final, where teams enter three gymnasts in each event, with every score counting. One wrong step, one anxious routine can scuttle medal hopes in a flash.
Malone will compete in four of the six rotations in the team final, four opportunities to move on from a difficult day. Then again, he's endured worse.
“You can’t always be perfect,” he said. “I just kind of made some silly mistakes that I know I can't make. But I’ll make sure that I go to the gym and (figure things out).”
