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Shane Wiskus selected for Paris Olympics as alternate
The Minnesota native drank in every ovation in what could have been the last performance of his career.
MINNEAPOLIS — Shane Wiskus, a member of the 2020 Olympic team, was selected to represent the U.S. in the Olympics once again, this time as an alternate.
Wiskus is retiring at the end of the competition season. The Minnesota native — who left his home state not long after the University of Minnesota cut its men’s program — drank in every ovation in what may have been the last performance of his career.
While Wiskus is stepping away, Fred Richard is poised to move into his prime. He began pointing toward Paris long ago while growing up in the Boston suburbs. Now it’s finally here and he is eager to show that there is plenty of substance underneath all that showmanship.
“I want to be a medalist Olympian, that’s my personality,” he said. “There’s always more to go. And I’m excited to just keep gunning for it.”
Richard will headline the five-man U.S. team that will head to Paris next month with a legitimate chance to medal after winning the Olympic trials on Saturday.
“It’s like a new mountain in my life,” Richard said. “And I’m ready to climb it.”
It certainly looks that way. Richard posted a steady and occasionally spectacular two-day all-around total of 170.500 at trials, just ahead of three-time national champion Brody Malone at 170.300.
Richard, known as “ Frederick Flips ” to his hundreds of thousands of social media followers, has spent years trying to nudge men’s gymnastics toward the spotlight through creative viral videos that often include collaborations with athletes in other sports.
The lights don’t get any brighter than the ones Richard and Olympic teammates Malone, Asher Hong, Paul Juda and Stephen Nedoroscik will compete under at Bercy Arena.
Nine months after earning a bronze at the 2023 world championships — the men’s program’s first at a major international competition in nearly a decade — Richard and the rest of the Americans believe they’re capable of even more this summer.
“It’s like we shouldn’t even be aiming for even just a medal,” said Richard, who also earned a bronze in the all-around at worlds last fall. “We should be aiming for gold and we’re going to land on something.”
The Americans have spent the last three years overhauling their program after finishing well off the podium at the Tokyo Olympics. They revamped their scoring system, offering bonus points at domestic meets for athletes who attempted more challenging skills.
The goal was to close the chasm in overall difficulty that had developed between the U.S. and longtime superpowers China and Japan. When the Americans saluted the judges for their first event in Tokyo they were already six points behind, the difference between the cumulative difficulty of their routines compared to the teams they were chasing.
That gap will be down to two points when the U.S. steps onto the floor during Olympic qualifying on July 27, giving them a legitimate chance to finish on the podium.
“(We are in) a much different position now,” high performance director Brett McClure said. “We’re going to be able to control our own destiny.”
And they’ll do it with the 24-year-old Malone, whose career was nearly derailed by a devastating right knee injury in March 2023. Three surgeries, 15 months and countless hours of physical therapy later, Malone’s knee is not perfect but better. His gymnastics might be, too.
Malone methodically worked his way back from the brink, though the last few weeks have been a blur. He didn’t put together a full floor routine until May, though he hasn’t exactly looked rusty. He cruised to a national title earlier this month and would have topped Richard at trials if not for a sloppy — by his standards — high bar routine on Saturday.
Considering where he was last fall when he watched the men’s program he was supposed to be the standard-bearer for between Tokyo and Paris roll on without him, Malone will more than take it.
“It crept up on me real quick I’m just super grateful for all the medical staff and everyone has helped me get back to this point,” Malone said. “I really couldn’t have done it without them.”
Juda and Hong, members of last year’s world championship team, will join Malone and Richard as the core of what will be a relatively young American team. Nedoroscik is 25. Malone is 24. Juda turns 23 on July 7. Richard and Hong are all of 20.
The quiet and unassuming Juda broke down in tears multiple times in the aftermath while Hong was relieved after a somewhat nightmarish performance at nationals — thanks in part to what he believes was rough treatment by the judges gave him little margin for error heading into trials.
“It was kind of like a battle between me and the judges,” Hong said. “That was kind of the goal. Like, ‘Try and find something (wrong) in this routine, I dare you.’”
Khoi Young will serve as the second alternates.
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The TODAY Show anchor and NBC Olympic correspondent spoke about her excitement for Paris and navigating work-life balance as a mom.
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — An old saying warns you to “never meet your heroes” because how you envision them might not correlate with reality.
But for me, that didn’t apply to Hoda Kotb at the U.S. Olympic Team Gymnastics Trials last weekend.
The warm, big smile and bubbly personality that greets America in the morning on NBC’s TODAY Show With Hoda & Jenna is exactly what you will experience in person.
The NBC veteran journalist has earned the right to parachute into a city to cover an event and only focus on her assignment. But that’s not Hoda. When asked if she would be available for a sit-down interview with me, her team happily agreed to find time in her packed schedule.
As I made way to our interview, I met her in the hallway.
“It’s so nice to meet you!” Hoda said as she hugged me.
She asked me about my career; where I was from, and told me about a time in her life when she once applied to a job in Minneapolis and didn’t get it. Concluding the conversation by complimenting the legacy and work of KARE 11.
Once we walked into the suite where we were shooting the interview, she exclaimed, “I can’t believe we have a three-camera shoot. Who are you people?!” Which brought a big smile to our photographer’s face.
When asked about her excitement for the Paris Olympics, Hoda said she is ready for a “redo” of Tokyo.
“Toyko was such a weird Olympics. It was unusual. It was masked. No family was there. It was just such a different Olympics, and I am so anxious for this to come back, and especially for these gymnasts,” Hoda said.
She began covering the Olympics onsite in Torino in 2006. She joked, “I think Roker has covered more!”
But when you have a passion for gymnastics like Hoda, covering the Olympics is an easy assignment to commit to.
“I just hugged Simone, Suni and Jordan. I feel like I have known them since forever,” Hoda said. “Simone was 19 when she won the gold in Rio and she’s 27 now. I feel like I have watched them grow up and mature and there is something special about them still being together right here right now.”
“When was the last time you actually got to be an eyewitness to someone’s life changing? It’s like one minute, ‘Who is that person?!’ The next minute they are a household name. You get to watch it in real-time. The country comes together, these kids’ lives are changed. It’s celebration city.” Hoda said.
For media covering the Olympics, it’s comparable to running a marathon every day for nearly a month. It’s a feat that journalists are lucky to cover once in their lifetime, but it comes with time changes, a rigorous schedule with events and interviews, live shots — and little sleep.
I asked Hoda, as a mom of two young girls: How does she balance her career and motherhood?
“I think ‘be here now’ works for me, and I try to teach my kids that, too. When I am at work, I am 100 at work. When I step in the door, I am a 100 at home,” Hoda said, admitting that balance still feels tricky to her.
Journalists get a front-row seat to the tragedies and triumphs of humanity. With that, mental health oftentimes is impacted, so I asked Hoda how she maintains her mental health.
“I think every single thing you put in your brain and your spirit become part of you. News to me is kind of that way, too. If you ingest morning, noon and night, it’s too much to carry. So, I am very careful about what I allow in. During my work hours, I let it all in because I want to know everything. When that time is done when I am at home, I am not constantly checking because my being can’t take it.”
Hoda climbed her way to the top of the industry with humble beginnings a small market in Greenville, Mississippi. From there, she went to work in smaller markets in Illinois and Florida before getting an anchor job in New Orleans. She began working at Dateline in 1998.
After more than 25 years of experience in life and in the industry, I asked Hoda what she would tell her younger self:
“I think I would say blessings come when it’s their time. Don’t worry. Everyone’s blessings come when they are supposed to come, and all of mine came after 50. I think I would have reminded her that work is important, but life is more so. And enjoy all of it. Be happy; you’re a fighter.”
A Swiftie like me, Hoda is known for wearing friendship bracelets made popular again by Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour. In honor of this year’s games, I made her several Olympic-themed bracelets.
“Are you serious?!” she said before giving me another hug.
I encourage you to go meet your heroes. Sometimes they’re better than you can imagine.
Hoda has numerous accolades from her work as a broadcast journalist, including one of the highest honors: a 2006 Peabody Award earned while working for Dateline. She also has a podcast and has written several publications. Her memoir, “Ten Years Later,” is a New York Times Bestseller.
Want more Hoda? You can watch her Monday-Friday after KARE 11 Sunrise.
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The law, which took effect Monday, will release hundreds of thousands of records listing the names of birth parents.
ST PAUL, Minn. — A new state law took effect Monday in Minnesota opening access to original birth records for all adopted people 18 years and older, offering thousands of Minnesotans a wealth of information that they previously could not obtain through the state.
The law, passed more than a calendar year ago in 2023, lifts long-running restrictions on adoptee birth records that date back to 1939. According to a Minnesota Department of Health spokesperson, roughly 150,000 original birth records are now eligible for public release upon the implementation of the law on July 1.
Joe Duea, who was adopted by a Central Minnesota family as a baby, placed his notarized paperwork in the mail early Monday afternoon so that he can finally obtain his original birth records.
Duea, 56, learned the identity of his birth parents and siblings through Ancestry.com DNA within the past decade or so, but he has been working for years with the Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform to broaden access to this information through the state.
“This is a first step for a lot of people’s equality of access to what they should have had a long time ago,” Duea said. “I’m not expecting to get anything enlightening that I don’t already know, but it’s just the fact of seeing it on paper, to actually realize that. It’s going to be monumental.”
Minnesota joins 14 other states in the U.S., including neighboring South Dakota, that allow unrestricted access to original birth records for adopted people 18 or older. Nationwide, these patchwork of laws vary state-by-state. In border states like Wisconsin and North Dakota, for example, court or parental permission are required for access, while in Iowa, the records may be redacted.
Advocacy groups in Minnesota have worked for decades to increase access to these records for adults who were adopted. In 2008, for example, the legislature passed a bill that included enhanced access but Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed the measure, citing privacy concerns for birth parents among other issues.
Under the law, birth parents cannot restrict access to the records. However, they can file paperwork with the state either listing contact information, or marking boxes saying they’d prefer to be contacted through an intermediary or not at all.
“Every adoptee’s story is gigantically complicated and everybody’s is different. Everybody has a complicated story,” said Duea, who now has a close relationship with many of the siblings he discovered. “Throughout my life, I’d always known I was adopted and I’ve always been interested in the story… I always wondered the story of how I came to be.”
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The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is in contracts talks with maintenance workers who can strike as early as July 2
MINNEAPOLIS — Park maintenance workers are set to walk off the job here as early as Tuesday, as negotiations over a new contract continue in private.
Both sides were hunkered down in contract talks Monday, looking for ways to avoid the strike, which would affect about 35 percent of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s year-round workforce.
Those covered under the LIUNA Local 63 contract include 201 permanent and 114 seasonal maintenance crew members at parks, pools and playgrounds. The unit also includes arborists who care for hundreds of thousands of trees.
They assert their pay isn’t keeping up with inflation, or what comparable workers in surrounding suburbs earn. According to a LIUNA study, the current top pay for parkkeepers is $30.99, compared to the suburban average of $38.02 for the same positions.
“A strike is always the last resort,” AJ Lange, the union business manager, told reporters last week.
“We’ve been bargaining in good faith for nearly seven months, and following our strike vote we returned to mediation with a revised proposal that would significantly reduce the overall cost for the park board.”
Union members picketed outside the Theo Wirth Home in South Minneapolis, which is the residence of Parks Superintendent Al Bangoura. The gathering included a giant inflatable rat, which is one of the visuals labor unions rely on often to make their point.
“What we do is make sure we do a playground inspection every day, to make sure the bolts and nuts are in the right areas, the right spots, to make sure your slide doesn’t fall off when your child is having a good time,” Lanel Lane, a parkkeeper, told the media.
“We’re not just living paycheck to paycheck. We’re one paycheck behind.”
The arborists are tasked with taking care of 400,000 trees in parks, plus 200,000 boulevard trees along Minneapolis city streets. Arborist Scott Jaeger said he and fellow arborists play a vital role in public safety.
“We keep the streets and public green spaces safer by removing hazardous trees, removing dead limbs making sure all that all stop signs and stop lights are visible,” Jaeger explained.
“When storms hit we are there to deal with the damaged trees, often in dangerous situations. Without park board’s highly skilled arborists, the risk to public safety would go up considerably.”
The Park Board said its negotiating team is making a good-faith effort to reach an agreement with the union. They told KARE if the strike does happen, they’ll prioritize and adjust maintenance to minimize the impact on park visitors.
The Board said its final offer featured a pay increase of 10 percent across the next three years, including bumps of 2-75 percent in year one, 4.5 percent in year two and 3 percent in year three.
The Board listed the following numbers as current pay for positions covered in the contract:
- Parkkeeper $61,000
- Arborist $65,000
- Horticulturist $67,000
- Crew Leader $81,000
- Foreman $92,000
The Board said the public cost is actually about 30 percent more, once the cost of insurance and other benefits are added.
The Board’s statement said they’ve agreed to eliminate the first step in the pay scale so that new workers can start at a higher pay level than they currently do.
