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American gymnasts are doing very well at the Paris Olympics so far. The women's team won gold in the team competition yesterday. The U.S. men's team broke a long Olympic medal drought with a team bronze. Now, tonight, it's the men's individual all-around event, where American Frederick Richard hopes to win again. His TikTok and Instagram videos have taken social media by storm, and his ambitions go beyond the Olympics. NPR's Becky Sullivan reports.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Before he was an Olympian, before he was a TikTok star, before he was even born, Frederick Richard's parents knew he was going to be full of energy.
ANN-MARIE RICHARD: I knew he was going to be a very active child from my stomach, from the womb.
SULLIVAN: This is Ann-Marie Richard, Frederick's mom.
A RICHARD: He was a very (laughter) active fetus and got out and was as active as I had predicted. He was doing flips in his crib, you know, and so gymnastics was a good outlet.
SULLIVAN: I met up with Ann-Marie, along with Frederick's dad, Carl, at the U.S. Olympic trials last month. There, Frederick - and it's Frederick, not Fred - had the highest score of the night, which secured his spot at his first-ever Olympic games. Ann-Marie and Carl were super excited, of course, but sending their son to Paris was honestly something they'd expected for a long time.
A RICHARD: Parents in the gym, you know, at a very young age, said to us, you'd better be saving your money, because he's going to the Olympics. Frederick was probably 6, 7.
SULLIVAN: They didn't know anything about gymnastics back then. Neither Ann-Marie nor Carl was born in the U.S. She's from Dominica, and he was born in Haiti, but there was a gym near their house in Massachusetts, and soon enough, Frederick could walk there by himself while his parents were at work. When the COVID pandemic hit, he was just turning 16. Being stuck at home with all that teenager energy, he had to make himself busy somehow, and so his TikTok, Frederick Flips, was born.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Let's go, Fred.
SULLIVAN: At first, it was videos in his living room - one-handed handstands, the hardest-looking push-ups you've ever seen. Then he got a gymnastics scholarship to the University of Michigan.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Whoa.
SULLIVAN: His posts are fun, like this one, where two teammates hold out a pair of shorts as Frederick tries to flip into them. In some, he invites other Michigan athletes, like this women's basketball player, to try gymnastics.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK VIDEO)
FREDERICK RICHARD: You did it perfect first time.
UNIDENTIFIED BASKETBALL PLAYER: Was that good?
F RICHARD: Obviously. You - she literally mastered it.
SULLIVAN: In this one, he's walking on his hands on a treadmill as a teammate makes the machine go faster and faster.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK VIDEO)
F RICHARD: This is getting really hard. We're at 3 miles an hour. This is a - like, this is a full walk.
SULLIVAN: His mom, Ann-Marie, watches them all, she says. She did not like that last one.
A RICHARD: I immediately texted him, and I'm like, that is dumb. Don't ever do that again, and he's like, Mom, it's not as bad as it looks. I know what I'm doing (laughter).
SULLIVAN: The goal of Frederick's videos isn't just to get followers or endorsements. He wants more people to care about men's gymnastics.
F RICHARD: Every competition I go to, I look in the crowd and I see, you know, a lot of seats open, I say, I want to change this, and this is the first step. Now we come back from the Olympics, and we make that really happen.
SULLIVAN: And he wants more opportunities for boys in this sport. Right now, there are only 15 colleges and universities that have a men's gymnastics program. That's it - 15. By contrast, there are 87 women's gymnastics programs. In basketball, there's well over 1,000 men's collegiate teams. The first step to accomplishing all of that was making it to these Olympics - check. Then came winning a medal in Monday's team all-around final - check.
F RICHARD: Honestly, it's scary, sometimes, when a plan is working exactly how you planned it out to be, and that's very exciting, and I hope to - you know, the plan is not done, and I really hope, you know, it pans out the way I know it can.
SULLIVAN: And he's not only talking about this summer.
F RICHARD: I have 10 more years of this sport, and I know it's going to go like this. I'm putting in the work.
SULLIVAN: But for now, what's next is today's individual all-around final, and no need to worry about how he'll handle the spotlight.
F RICHARD: I'm going to enjoy it. I'm 20 years old, and the world is watching. I'm going to give them something to be entertained by.
SULLIVAN: That the world will be watching is especially true after the team success the other night. His parents, Ann-Marie and Carl, will be there, too, cheering him on. And no matter what happens, they know that this is just the start for their son.
Becky Sullivan, NPR News, Paris. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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