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U.S. gymnast Frederick Richard opens up about Olympic journey and his efforts to grow the fan base for men’s gymnastics
The U.S. men’s gymnastics team won a bronze medal earlier this week at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, with Frederick Richard helping to lead the team to their first medal in the team event in 16 years.
The 20-year-old gymnast from Massachusetts isn’t only captivating audiences at competitions, but also online as he works to grow the fan base for the sport.
Richard spends 10 hours a day in his gymnastics training center at the University of Michigan. It’s been a lifelong passion.
“He was a very active child,” Richard’s mother, Ann-Marie Richard said. “He was always upside down in his crib. He was literally just on his two hands doing a handstand.”
By age 2, Richard would follow his sister into her gymnastics class in Massachusetts.
“They tried to put me in gymnastics, and I wouldn’t listen,” Richard said. “So they basically kicked me out and said come back when he’s older and can follow the rules.”
He went back at 4 years old, and his journey hasn’t stopped since. At age 8, he was competing and training so hard that he asked his parents to skip family vacations.
His mother said at the time he was at the gym a minimum of three hours per day and loving it. She said they encouraged him to try other sports, but Richard stuck with gymnastics — and it’s paying off.
The University of Michigan gymnast finished first in the all-around at the U.S. Olympic trials in June, just weeks after his second place finish at the U.S. Championships.
At 20 years old, he’s the youngest man to compete in the sport at the Olympics since 1972, but it goes beyond competing. For Richard, it’s his personal mission to get more people interested and involved in men’s gymnastics.
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“I grew up in a gym that if you’re lucky, 10% of the people in the room are male gymnasts and the rest are women,” he said. “I grew up not even wanting to tell people that I do gymnastics … It’s why I want to get as many kids into the sport as possible, as many Black kids into the sport as possible because that was another thing I struggled with growing up.”
Social media has helped Richard put a spotlight on the sport. His more than 1 million Instagram and TikTok followers know him as “Frederick Flips.”
In one post, he and Olympic champion Simone Biles challenge one another to show the differences between men’s and women’s gymnastics.
“In gymnastics, you have a specific code book, you have to follow the rules. In social media there are no rules. I can do my gymnastics however I want and get millions of views.”
In the beginning, his parents admitted that they were concerned about Richard’s use of social media.
“The only thing that worried me was by doing that, ‘How much time are you taking from gymnastics?'” said his dad, Carl Richard. “And he told me he’s helping to grow the sport.”
Looking back at a video of a competition from when he was a kid, the college gymnast turned Olympic medalist had a message for his younger self.
“I just know at that time I was having a lot of fun and just doing what I loved. And so I wouldn’t change a thing, and I would just say, ‘You’re doing amazing.'”
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
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Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
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Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
