Fresh off winning a bronze medal in Monday's men's gymnastics team final, high-flying Stoughton, Massachusetts, native Frederick "Flips" Richard fought hard for another podium finish in Wednesday's men's gymnastics all-around competition, but ultimately came up short.
While Richard had been the reigning bronze medalists at the world championships, he ended up in the middle of the pack at the Paris Olympics, in 15th place, just behind teammate Paul Juda, of Illinois.
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Richard started out with a few mistakes on the first rotation, slipping on the pommel horse. He got a score of 12.733, more than two points and 20 places behind first place.
Richard rebounded after that. He posted four scores above 14 — on vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar, though none of the scores above 15 that the eventual gold and silver medalists, Japan's Shinnosuke Oka and China's Boheng Zhang, would post.
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"I wish I could have shown my full potential here," Richard told NBC10 Boston after the meet. "I was definitely a lot more tired than expected and the performance wasn't where I wanted it."
But he also noted that the team "accomplished a lot," beyond just medaling — it attracted support and got exposure as well, and Richard called that "a great thing to take away from this first Olympics."
The charismatic 20-year-old has been one of the biggest U.S. stars at the 2024 Paris Olympics, and is expected to be in the mix to continue representing Team USA at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. And said Wednesday he's going to come back stronger.
The president and founder of “Frederick Flips” doesn’t just see himself as just an athlete. He’s a CEO. An influencer. A YouTuber. A budding visionary who counts Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan among his heroes.
“I’m not trying to copy things and follow paths that have been made,” Richard told The Associated Press earlier this year. “I’m always like ‘What am I going to do the next 10 years? How do I create this path that’s never been done, this career? It doesn’t exist.’”
Men’s gymnastics has been largely an afterthought in the U.S. for decades, often operating in the shadows of a women’s program that regularly churns out gold medalists who reach “first name only” status within the sport.
Richard is only too aware that this kind of status doesn’t exist for American men. He’s trying to change that one performance, one viral social media post, one television appearance at a time.
“One of my goals is to have someone walk down the street one day and you ask them to name a male gymnast and they actually name a male gymnast,” he said.
Which brings the University of Michigan junior to his name.
Fred? Frederick? He’s bounced between preferences for a while before settling on both depending on the setting. Sure “Fred” works in the U.S. but “Frederick Richard” — a nod to his French heritage — carries a little more sophistication internationally.
If you want to build a brand, after all, you’ve got to know your audience.
Richard took a significant step in getting his name — whichever one you settle on — out when he earned bronze in the all-around at the 2023 world championships, the first by an American man at a major international meet in 13 years. It was a massive step for a men’s program that’s been running in place for the better part of a decade.
Richard has no intention of becoming one of those influencers who become only loosely affiliated with what made them influential in the first place.
He only truly feels at home when he’s in the gym with chalk on his hands, tinkering with a routine or a skill or diving into videos of the men he's now competing against in Paris.
He knows a medal of any color would be huge for the U.S. program. But why settle for simply getting on the podium? Why not focus on getting to the top even knowing that defending Olympic champion Daiki Hashimoto of Japan will arrive in Paris as a heavy favorite to repeat?
Richard is not programmed to aim lower. If he was, maybe he would have bailed on all those weekend practices and gone to a party instead. Maybe he would have let frequently being the only Black athlete at a meet filled with predominantly white competitors get to him.
It never did. Partly because he says he always felt accepted. Partly because he understood the opportunity in front of him if he could just stick with it.
“Kids look up to these big names,” he said. “But I wasn’t seeing anybody who was Black like me, dominating on the world stage (in men’s gymnastics). ... I wanted to be that person. I wanted the gyms to fill up with Black kids. That’s still one of my big goals. That’s why I do this too.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
