Fans couldn’t help but joke that Stephen Nedoroscik looked like he was asleep before his turn. At the 2024 Olympics final, he sat with his head tilted back and eyes closed, sparking memes and comparisons to a “sleeper agent.” But in truth, he was anything but drowsy.

Nedoroscik later explained he was practicing deep breathing and visualizing his pommel-horse routine to steady himself after hours of waiting. When his moment finally came, he slipped off his glasses, silenced the jokes, and nailed a near-flawless 14.866.

That clutch performance secured Team USA’s first Olympic men’s gymnastics team medal, a bronze, since 2008, ending a 16-year drought. But this kind of performance might not be visible at the 2025 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, because the superman of gymnastics did not fly at the 2025 Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships. What went down?

Returning to elite gymnastics after months, he started with a score of 14.200 (D 5.1, E 9.100) on Day 1 on the pommel horse. On Day 2, he attempted a higher-difficulty element but came off the apparatus early, earning 13.200. His combined score of 27.400 placed him fifth overall on pommel horse. Now, the rule is that a gymnast who wins a national apparatus title at the Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships can automatically qualify for the six-person world team.

To do so, they must also post a difficulty score on either day that matches or exceeds the top D-score from the recent European or Asian Championships. And for pommel horse, that benchmark was 6.2, which Nedoroscik failed to reach.

And this reminds us of his fate in 2023…

History repeated for Stephen Nedoroscik

In 2023, Stephen Nedoroscik won his fourth straight U.S. pommel horse title at nationals. But there was a catch: Winning the national championship wasn’t enough anymore.

The new qualification rules meant he had to match the difficulty scores from the top European and Asian gymnasts that year. Max Whitlock had thrown down a brutal 6.9 difficulty at Europeans, while Nariman Kurbanov posted a 6.6 at Asians.

Those were the numbers Nedoroscik had to hit. But he never got close to the 6.6 or 6.9 difficulty he needed. And just like that, despite being America’s undisputed pommel horse king for four years running, he was out.

The 2023 World Championships happened without him, and all he could do was watch from home while other gymnasts competed for the medals he’d dreamed about.