PHOENIX — Frederick Richard has an Olympic bronze medal, a World Championships bronze medal and NCAA individual and team titles.
Now he’s a U.S. all-around champion, too.
Richard pulled away to win the two-day Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships comfortably. He totaled 170.015 points between Thursday and Saturday, prevailing by 2.051 over Shane Wiskus.
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“I strived my whole life to get here, it took 20 years, four championships later as a senior, but we’re here,” Richard said on the NBC Sports broadcast. “It shows the hard work is paying off.”
Richard led 19-year-old Danila Leykin by 153 thousandths of a point after night one.
That was despite Richard giving up six tenths for deductions Thursday for wearing a uniform that doesn’t conform to rules (an intentional move he also made last year) and for saluting in the wrong direction after his pommel horse routine.
Richard was docked another three tenths Saturday for the uniform — again, a deduction he knew he would be getting.
Richard later hit his horse set Saturday, then said with a smile, “I saluted this time.”
He added the U.S. all-around crown to an already impressive CV. It also includes a World Championships all-around bronze medal in 2023 (the first for an American man since 2010), an Olympic Trials all-around win in 2024 and an Olympic team bronze medal in 2024.
He also has more than 900,000 followers each on TikTok and Instagram, plus more than 450,000 YouTube subscribers. Richard graduated from the University of Michigan this spring.
Wiskus nixed a planned retirement after just missing the Paris Olympic team. He also missed the 2025 U.S. Championships after shoulder surgery.
That shoulder flared up after his fourth of six routines Saturday. That made his final routine, on parallel bars, “by far the most excruciating routine I’ve ever done.”
Still, he was grateful for his best career finish in a U.S. all-around. He is likely headed to October’s World Championships, his first global championship since the Tokyo Games. Getting back to that level was a goal he wrote in his notebook.
“This post-meet feeling, putting 12 routines together and competing the way that you trained, and having that moment after the routine to celebrate and have that sigh of relief, those are the feelings that I’m chasing,” he said. “Those are the feelings that I know I’ll never get anywhere else except for gymnastics.”
Leykin could have become the youngest U.S. men’s all-around champion since 1989 (Tim Ryan). He dropped from second place after the first night of competition to third. He lost two points Saturday for two falls on floor exercise.
Still, it was big climb. He was 10th at nationals in 2025.
“After day one, it was pretty cool to see myself in second place, closely behind Fred,” he said. “It’s a little more real in the sense that these dreams are kind of slowly becoming a reality.”
Also Saturday, Olympic bronze medalist Stephen Nedoroscik fell off the pommel horse and dropped from second place in the event on Thursday to fifth.
Nedoroscik was pessimistic about his chances at nationals due to a left shoulder injury. His goal was to make the national team, which will be at least 15 gymnasts.
By the end of the weekend, the five-man team for October’s World Championships in Rotterdam, Netherlands, will be announced.
The team will not include 2024 Olympic team bronze medalists Brody Malone and Asher Hong, who combined to win the previous five U.S. all-around titles.
Malone is taking this season off from competition, while Hong missed nationals due to finger and hand injuries.
Richard said the U.S. team is an underdog compared to the top nations like China and Japan, “but not out of it.”
Richard announced back in May that he will win at least one gold medal at the World Championships, probably in the all-around.
“In order to have a chance at medaling at worlds, I still have to go for every skill because it’s going to be much tighter,” said Richard, who scored 1.363 more points Saturday than Thursday. “These guys are still scoring much higher than I did today.”
Nationals end Sunday with the last day of women’s competition, live at 3 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.
