Pommel Horse King Stephen Nedoroscik’s Olympic Victory Was Written in the Stars

Nedoroscik's hometown of Worcester, MA, is playfully referred to as the "Paris of the Eighties." As a MA native, I feel uniquely qualified to bring this decades-old, regional joke to the masses.

By Lauren Tousignant  |  July 30, 2024 | 7:13pm
Photos: Getty Images LatestOlympics Paris Olympics
Pommel Horse King Stephen Nedoroscik’s Olympic Victory Was Written in the Stars

What makes a champion? Are they born? Are they made? Are they the product of eating Wheaties for breakfast? Or is their eventual victory predetermined by the city they were born in, especially if that city is the butt of a beloved, regional joke?

Stephen Nedoroscik, Team USA’s pommel horse hero, has emerged as one of the first viral sensations of the Paris 2024 Olympics, capturing social media’s heart with his glasses, his Clark Kent transformation, his naps and/or meditations, his Rubik’s cube skills, and the fact that his only event is pommel horse. Gymnasts usually need to be great at a few events in order to qualify for the Olympic team, but Nedoroscik is so good at pommel horse and the men’s team hasn’t won an Olympic medal in so long, that they made an exception for the 25-year-old Penn State grad and Worcester, MA native who’s spent the last decade of his life training for this singular Olympic event.

On Monday, that exception paid off! Nedoroscik delivered a jaw-dropping, 45-second routine that looked as though the heavens were holding up his legs with wires, and he was being spun around by God herself. It was the type of Moment we all watch the Olympics for, and his effort won Team USA a bronze medal—the U.S. men’s gymnastics team’s first Olympic medal in 16 years. The internet has continued to go wild for Nedoroscik, who’ll compete again in the event finals on Saturday.

But, what the internet doesn’t know is that Nedoroscik isn’t just from Worcester, MA, he’s from “Worcester: Paris of the Eighties,” MA. I grew up north of Boston, but my boyfriend is actually from Worcester, so I feel uniquely qualified to ensure this decades-old regional joke is properly relayed to the masses.

The best part? There’s not much to relay! It was the city’s official motto at one point during the 80s, but no one really knows who thought of it or why. And since Worcester—despite having some great restaurants, some great universities, and a pretty solid art museum—is very much anything but Paris, it stuck as a fun little quip. (But a quip that’s made for some great novelty t-shirts.) They do have tiny red hearts on all their street signs, so I guess, if you really wanted, you could try to make the argument that Worcester, just like Paris, is for lovers…but it would be a bad argument.

In 2013, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette covered the opening of a downtown coffee shop that named itself after the slogan, writing, “The name of the café dates back to when the official motto for Worcester was ‘Worcester: Paris of the Eighties,’ said [general manager Erika] Dunn. The promotion at that time was aimed at bringing people downtown, breathing more life into the city, she said.” Sounds like a solid slogan explanation to me. Other than this article and a bunch more tweets, there’s not much I can link to to explain this excellent, running joke. You just have to know the joke, the same way people in Massachusetts know that the letter R has no business being in the word “park.”

All of this is to say, huge congrats again to Nedoroscik and the men’s gymnastics team, and bravo to the universe for creating this fun geographic wink. My hometown is nicknamed “Mill City,” so I’m feeling encouraged that my dream of becoming a multimultimultimillionaire (but not a billionaire because that would be unethical) is, in fact, my cosmic destiny.

 
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