gymnastics

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games are in full session with stories of superior and heroic athletic performances by over 10,000 athletes from over 200 countries dominating the global sports headlines.

Two names with significantly different purposes yet identical goals highlight the roster of the United States Olympic team that will compete in the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France, beginning on July 26.

“To be young, gifted and Black,” words from Nina Simone’s legendary song, are fitting to describe Fred Richard, a gymnast on the U.S. national team. Richard, raised in Stoughton, Massachusetts, became at 19 the youngest male in American history to win a bronze medal in gymnastics Oct. 5 at the World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium.

It isn’t often that the old expression “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” — coined in the ABC television show “Wide World of Sports” — plays out so clearly and poignantly in the minds of American sports fans as it did last weekend.