PARIS — With an Olympic medal on the line, Paul Juda stood in front of the pommel horse knowing the United States needed a clean performance from him. He could feel the moment starting to bear down on him.
His teammate Asher Hong saw the Deerfield native’s nervousness and tried to reassure him.
“I could tell he was getting a little jittery before the routine,” Hong said. “I told him, ‘Paul, you’re the man for this job.’ You earned this spot. Go out there and show it off.”
It was exactly what Juda, the last member picked for the America squad, needed to hear. He raised his arm to the judges, then did what he has done throughout the Paris Games:
He delivered big for the United States.
The U.S. men’s gymnastics squad won bronze Monday, breaking its 16-year medal drought and extending Juda’s expectation-defying run at these Games.
Japan took first, finishing .532 points ahead of the second-place Chinese team. The United States — consisting of Juda, Hong, Frederick Richard, Brody Malone and Stephen Nedoroscik — was 1.8 points behind the leader.
The podium finish marked another surreal moment for Juda, who initially had set the modest goal of being at least an alternate on this team. Yet in the past four days, he has won an Olympic medal, qualified for the individual all-around competition, met the first lady Jill Biden and appeared in a Beyoncé video used by NBC to kick off the opening ceremony.
“It just feels like it’s all worth it,” Juda said after receiving his medal. “Every tough day that you go through and you ask yourself why you do it, makes sense now. I’m just glad we got it done.”
Juda, 23, competed on four apparatuses Monday, leading off the team each time. He opened with a Kasamatsu1.5 twist on the vault, nailing the landing cold and drawing a huge roar from the crowd.
Earlier in the day, he had watched old videos of himself sticking landings in big moments and imagined himself doing it at the Olympics. But he decided not to focus solely on that, he said, because he had fallen every other time he did so.
“I think I kinda blacked out before my vault,” he said. “I think I started on the wrong foot. I was running and I looked at the (TV camera that moves down the runway alongside the gymnasts) and then I thought, ‘Why am I watching the camera run with me?’ Then the next thing I know I stuck it.”
Easily the most emotional and demonstrative member of the U.S. team, Juda clenched his fists after the vault and screamed in exhilaration. It would be one of many, many ways Juda shared his excitement during the team final. By his last rotation, he had danced, bear-hugged teammates and pumped his fists to chants of “USA! USA!”
“There’s always gotta be someone who is just overly grateful for the opportunities that are in front of him and that’s Paul Juda,” said Team USA assistant coach Jordan Gaarenstroom. “He’s the guy on the team who is full of emotion … and I think the guys on the team appreciate that and resonate with that. They know that he’s kind of the beating heart, in that sense. We want Paul to be Paul. We want him to show emotion. We want him to show joy when he hits a routine. These are all things that add to the energy and culture of our team.”
Juda, however, did more than just lift his teammates’ spirits at these Olympics. He raised their medal prospects each time stepped on the mat, beginning with a stellar performance in the qualifying round that helped earn the United States a spot in the finals. He was equally steady Monday, improving his scores on all four apparatuses from the qualifying round.
He arrived in Paris planning to be a dependable lead-off man for teammates who had bigger tricks. Instead, he laid down a series of routines over two days that helped push the United States onto the podium.
Juda even volunteered to be the first to go on pommel horse, a notoriously weak spot for the American men. He clearly didn’t run that idea by his mother, Ewa Bacher, who dislikes the difficult apparatus so much she told the Tribune she had wanted to start a petition to remove it from these Olympics.
“I volunteered to lead off on pommel horse because I knew it was going to come down to the wire and I wanted to be that guy if it came down to the wire,” Juda said. “It was an honor and a privilege.”
The son of Polish immigrants, Juda celebrated at a nearby restaurant with his parents and teammates after the medal ceremony. He hugged his mother when he entered and hung then his medal around his father Jozef’s neck.
All three had tears in their eyes.
“I don’t think I even knew what the American Dream was when I came here,” his mother said. “But because of Paul’s hard work and dedication … and because of his coaches and everyone who helped us, we got our American Dream.”
Juda will compete for the final time in Paris on Wednesday, when he makes a long shot bid for an individual all-around medal. Crazier things have happened to Paul Juda at these Games, but he said he’s not worrying about the outcome.
“The all-around finals is going to be my swan song. I’m gonna treat it like a victory lap,” he said. “But who knows what’s going to happen?”
Chicago Tribune photographer Brian Cassella contributed.
