Struggling Heavily, American Gymnastics Star Forced to Seek Help From Irish World Champion for NCAA Season

Remember Fred Richards at the 2024 Olympics? Remember when he was on the Pommel Horse? In the very first rotation, he made and few mistakes and slipped. He got a score of 12.733, more than two points and 20 places behind first place. Ever since then, he has been trying to get better at the skill, but failing, in an Instagram video he posted, he was seen continuously failing at the move. But he also captioned the post.”Learn from the best that’s always the answer😌“. And who is the best?

Olympic champion, world champion, European champion, Commonwealth champion – Rhys McClenaghan. He had quite a few suggestions that helped the Olympic champion better his skills. His first tip -“What makes it weak is when you keep having your chest out in the front support position, but actually a circle looks pretty nice when you’ve got like a strong chest in position in that front support.”

The next thing we see is that the video draws parallels from Rhys performance in Paris and Richards’ current. Richards, now keeping his chest in, takes the second advice. “Your support on your right hand, in the back, support on one handle, it needs to be more. Your weight needs to be like on your right hand, and then as soon as that right hand goes down in back support of one handle, the push to handstand needs to be starting.” Once again, the video switches to a parallel between the two, and Richards is already doing it better than before.

Now time for the third piece of advice. In the video Rhys said, “That left hand pretty much doesn’t move from the middle of the horse, and then the right hand, so that’s like your pillar, your left arm is your pillar that doesn’t really move, and then the right hand is the one that goes around the left.” The video swaps to a slow-mo of Rhys doing it during the Olympics, and then Richards going up and doing it. This time, the gymnasts could very easily do it.

The video has attracted comments from various people. Even Tara Davis Woodhall commented, “Wait…. This is the coolest thing ever.” Richards is known for doing hard things like this, be it the jersey or this attempt to better himself or backfilling for 16 hours or even claiming the NCAA record.

Fred Richards and World Records

“There’s six events plus team and all-around. So there’s eight possible. I mean, you can win it anyway, but I want to break the record and get four NCAA titles this year.”  This is what the goal was for in the 2025 NCAA season. He had already made the record for the most title in one NCAA season back in 2023 when he won gold in the all-around, parallel bars, and high bar.

This record was tied by Asher Hong winning titles on rings, vault, and parallel bars in 2024. Come 2025, Richards wants the crown all to himself. Richard was mostly out of the 2024 season but he is back in 2025 with a red hot from. The University of Michigan men’s gymnastics team claimed their fifth consecutive Big Ten Championship and Fred Richard was crowned All-Around champion for the third straight year, the first time a Wolverine has won three in a row since Rick McCurdy from 1969 to 71.

Other than that has another world record in his mind, back flipping for 16 hours straight. Richards has claimed that he going to break the world record for the number of backflips on May 2nd in his recent Instagram post made on March 9, 2025. He is doing this to raise money for kids in Africa. Great initiative, don’t you think? Will he break it?