US gymnast Fred Richard is out to make history at the Olympics

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PARIS — “I’ve been looking at people upside down my whole life.” — Frederick Richard

Shortly before he left for Paris, Frederick Richard was on a Zoom call with a few college students discussing, among other things, his excitement over participating in his first Olympics. He also talked about how he wanted to be introduced before his first Olympic competition. Would it be Frederick Flips, which is how he is known to several thousand of social media followers?

Would it be Fred Richard, or would he choose the more formal Frederick Richard, perhaps with a French twist on “Richard”?

Everybody offered a suggestion. Richard said he would take them all under advisement.

The answer came Saturday morning at the first day of Olympic competition. During team introductions, the public address announcer introduced the young gymnast as “Frederick Richard.”

“It felt good,” Richard said in the mixed zone after Saturday’s competition. “That’s my real name — that’s the French name, Frederick Richard, the brand name is Frederick Flips, so I think I should be called Frederick.”

By whatever name he used, Richard left an impressive Day 1 calling card. A strong performance on the high bar and an electric floor routine left the audience buzzing, looking forward to the week ahead.

Richard has dreamed about this Olympic moment for years. After the first day of competition, he was asked how the anticipation of the moment measured up to the moment itself.

“I think it’s better,” he said. “The energy’s amazing, my body feels great, I’m healthy, I’m strong, and it’s the moment I’ve been waiting for, I want to enjoy it and I am enjoying it.”

For the 20-year-old University of Michigan junior, Saturday was just Day 1, Step 1 in an ambitious multi-faceted set of goals: winning an Olympic gold medal, making U.S. men’s gymnastics relevant and attracting more African American men to a sport in which Black men have been few and far between.

That’s a lot of extra weight to carry into a rigorous Olympic competition, but Richard said he doesn’t feel a burden.

“It fuels me; it’s more like an opportunity,” he said. “If someone needs to do it, I get to be the one who gets to do it. That’s powerful, like I have a calling. I have a purpose in my sport. It’s bigger than just getting medals.

“I think it makes it easier. When I go to this Olympics, I feel I’m meant to do something powerful. I’m meant to do something that makes history.”

The USA men’s gymnastics team last won a medal, the bronze in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Richard became the youngest American gymnast to win an individual world medal in the men’s competition at the 2023 World Gymnastics Championships. With that bronze medal, Richard became the first American men’s all-around medalist since 2010.

Richard said his plan long-term is to bring as many eyes to the sport as possible. “People don’t see gymnastics from the men’s side,” he said. “You see basketball every single day, when you pick up your phone, when you walk down the street, turn on the TV. You don’t see talk about gymnastics.

“When you ask a person on the street to name a gymnast, they might be able to name Simone [Biles], or a woman gymnast. If the sport’s in your head and you say what do I want to put my kid in, at least if you see women’s gymnastics, you can at least think this could a possibility. Right now, people never think of men’s gymnastics as a possibility.”

Many think of USA men’s gymnastics as an afterthought.

While the presence of Black men in gymnastics has been spotty, Black women have become a powerful force. In 1992, Dominique Dawes became the first Black woman to win an individual Olympic medal. In 2012, Gabby Douglas became the first Black gymnast to win the all-around title and Biles continues to single-handedly redefine women’s gymnastics. Six members of the senior women’s national team are African American.

While Black female gymnasts have reached critical mass, Richard is often a solitary figure, the only Black male elite gymnast in the sport.

This has fueled him as well.

“You feel out of place, especially from a young age,” he said. “When you’re younger, you try harder to fit in. Once you get older, you’re like, ‘Whatever, I’ll be me.’

“It kind of put this chip on my shoulder. I want to dominate. I don’t want to be the odd one out that doesn’t stand out. I’m going to be the best one that they all look up to. That’s what pushed me to reach the highest level to be winning these competitions. I’m the Black kid, but I’m the Black kid who’s really good at gymnastics.”

Richard was introduced to gymnastics at age 2 when his older sister began learn gymnastics at a place near their home in Stoughton, Massachusetts.

Richard tagged along. He saw everyone executing flips and he began to flip as well. There is a photo of Richard in his crib doing a headstand. Two years later, Richard’s parents enrolled him in the gym.

“I would go to the gym and see people flipping and I was 2 years old,” he said. “So, I’d go back home, and I’d be chucking flips on the bed.”

No sport came close to luring him away — not soccer, not baseball, not football, not hoops. Gymnastics was it. “I just loved it from the beginning, so I never even though about switching and trying new sports,” he said.

The most challenging moment of Richard’s career was when he suffered a stress fracture in his back at 14. He was out of commission for six months, tried to come back too soon, suffered another stress fracture and was sidelined for another six months.

That injury changed the trajectory of his life in gymnastics and led him to Paris.

“This is a time when you find out who you want to be in the future, what you really love,” he said. “During that one-year period it made me realize how much I loved this sport, how much it was a part of me.

“When I came back, I decided that I was going to give it everything every day, because I knew what it was like not to have it. That’s the switch that led me to this path of becoming an Olympian.”

Richard did not attend the opening ceremony Friday. With competition set to begin a day later, he opted to conserve his energy. That was just one of the many sacrifices he has made to reach this point in his career.

“In high school, my friends started hanging out on the weekend and going to parties and having people over, but I had to train every single day,” he said. “I didn’t even go to my prom because I had a competition that weekend. There are no skipping days in this sport.”

With the next Olympics scheduled for Los Angeles in 2028, Richard’s goal of elevating men’s gymnastics is timely. After the Paris Games, he will embark on a 30-city Gold Over America Tour, spreading the gospel of gymnastics.

“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.

He would like that name to be his. Richard has a Frederick Flips clothing line and a hefty social media following.

All he needs now is an Olympic medal. Preferably gold.