PHOENIX — In Frederick Richard’s Google Doc outlining his training plan through the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, the first sheet lists about 40 reasons why he didn’t win a gold medal at the last Olympics in 2024.
Richard rattled some off the top of his head.
“Missed ice baths, missed yoga sessions, not understanding every skill from a knowledge standpoint as much as possible, not watching as much gymnastics as I could have,” he said. “Just every possible thing.”
The Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships, which start Thursday (live on Peacock and NBCSN), will gauge Richard’s progress at the midpoint between the Paris and LA Games.
Richard is the favorite to win his first U.S. all-around title once the two days of men’s competition are complete on Saturday at the Mortgage Matchup Center.
He is the only member of the 2024 Olympic bronze-medal team who is competing on all six events at these nationals. Asher Hong and Brody Malone, who combined to win the last five U.S. all-around titles, are sitting this one out.
Richard is already a World Championships all-around bronze medalist, plus he won the all-around at the 2024 Olympic Trials (four weeks after taking runner-up at nationals).
Yet his coaches at the University of Michigan remind him that he hasn’t won a U.S. all-around title yet.
“The goal is to really dominate this week, not just win,” said Richard, who has more than 900,000 followers each on TikTok and Instagram. “If I win it, I feel like people will say a couple of guys, key players were injured. You know, there’s Asher, there’s Brody. So it’s about dominating, I guess, to really make a statement.”
Richard could also be motivated by what happened at the 2025 U.S. Championships.
He was runner-up to Hong in the all-around but wasn’t among the six men picked to compete at the 2025 World Championships, in large part because he didn’t place in the top two on any single apparatus at nationals. There was no team event at those worlds, so event specialists were prioritized.
Richard called it a humbling experience, but he was also grateful not to make the team.
“I don’t want to just be this side character at the worlds where you’re scoring 15th,” he said.
Richard’s prep last year — spending two weeks each in China and Japan — was meant to boost him for the rest of the 2028 Olympic cycle and not just 2025. (He also broke the Guinness World Record in May 2025 for most standing backflips in a 24-hour span — 1,111 flips, a record since eclipsed.)
“I learned so much that’s changed the way I train right now every day,” he said. “I think it set me up for the rest of the quad, so I wouldn’t change a single thing, but it just makes me hungrier this year to show that I am the top in the country.”
Richard won all-around bronze in his World Championships debut in 2023 with a total difficulty score that was an average of 1.35 points lower than the other two medalists. At the 2024 Olympics, he placed 15th and had eight tenths less difficulty than the medalists on average.
Richard believes he will go into this October’s World Championships — should he make the team — within one point of difficulty of the top international men in the all-around. He already asserted that he will win a gold medal at worlds in Rotterdam, probably in the all-around.
The goal is to have matched the top gymnasts from China and Japan in difficulty by the 2027 Worlds to set him up for LA 2028.
His training plan is planted and updated meticulously in that Google Doc, but the regrets of 2024 are a constant reminder.
“Every time I enter that doc to tweak something, I see that list,” he said. “I look through it again, and I think, am I doing everything I possibly can be doing? Am I missing out on the recovery, on the basics work, on the flexibility, everything? And then I make adjustments. But that first (page) is the motivator. I’m not afraid to look back at mistakes and use it to get better.”
