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Stephen Nedoroscik, “Pommel Horse Guy,” competes for Olympic medal in men’s gymnastics final
Stephen Nedoroscik, the pommel horse specialist who has become a breakout sensation at the 2024 Paris Games, competes on Saturday for an Olympic medal in the men’s gymnastics individual final.
Nedoroscik, 25, will go for the gold in the individual pommel horse finals — the only event he competes in, but one he does exceptionally well.
During the team event, Nedoroscik scored 14.866 on the pommel horse and played a big part in Team USA winning the bronze, the first U.S. medal for men’s gymnastics in 16 years. Nedoroscik had the highest score for any event among the U.S. male gymnasts during the team match.
His 15.200 qualifying score for the individual event tied Ireland’s Rhys McClenaghan for the tops among the eight finalists. The event is set to begin at 11:15 a.m. ET.
Since Team USA won its bronze medal on Monday, Nedoroscik has become an Olympic darling known as “Pommel Horse Guy.” He has been compared to Clark Kent for wearing dark-framed glasses, which he whips off and turns into Superman when he gets on the pommel horse, a fan wrote on social media after his win.
Nedoroscik takes all the internet memes in stride, telling Entertainment Tonight, “They are hilarious. It is such an honor to be in that position.”
He said he felt positive about his chances of winning a medal on Saturday, saying: “Fingers crossed, I do. I have a good feeling about how this week’s been going.”
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Starstruck: The public’s one-sided bond with celebrities
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Brush with fame: The public’s one-sided bond with celebrities
Journalist Jancee Dunn admits it: She has been obsessed with rock star Stevie Nicks ever since high school. “I listened to Stevie’s music for hours and hours and hours,” she said. “I tried to dress, in an ill-advised moment, like Stevie! And she’s just kind of bound up in my early years in a way that is really intense and deeply personal.”
The years flew by, but her feelings never faded. So, imagine her joy when, in 1997, Harper’s Bazaar assigned her to interview Stevie Nicks at her California home!
Dunn began prepping immediately, rehearsing in front of a mirror how she would say “Hell-o, Stevie.”
Did Nicks understand what a fan she was? “I kept it together so I wouldn’t creep her out; I don’t think she fully knew what a fan that I was,” she said. “I knew to kind of pull it back!”
The interview even featured a surreal tour of the rock star’s closet, filled with capes she had worn on stage and her famous platform boots. Dunn said it was, indubitably, one of the happiest afternoons of her life. Her only keepsake: A precious autographed T-shirt that she stores folded in a special place in her closet.
Asked if she ever though, This is fun, this is great, but Stevie’s just a person like me, Dunn replied, “No! No, why would I think that? It’s Stevie Nicks! Never did I think that, because it’s not true. She’s different. She’s otherworldly.”
Sociologist Kerry Ferris, a professor at Northern Illinois University, says our excitement over celebrities stems from them embodying things that we want for ourselves: “They have some combination of talent and good looks and wealth and renown,” she said.
Ferris has a database of dozens of celebrity encounter stories: “There’s a whole sort of category of encounters that involve physical contact, and fans really get excited about that: ‘I touched so-and-so.’ ‘I gave them a hug.’ ‘I shook their hand.’ ‘I sat next to them on the bus.’ And then, they get off the bus! It’s very fleeting. But it becomes the nugget of the celebrity-sighting story.”
Ferris said these stories typically follow a pattern. First comes disbelief (Is that really Beyoncé?), then strategizing (should I go introduce myself?), and then, often, embarrassment! “People get really worried about how stupid they must have sounded, looked or seemed,” Ferris said.
Psychologists refer to this kind of one-sided relationship as “parasocial.” University of Indianapolis professor Travis Cooper, who teaches in the philosophy and religion department, explains: “The fan is going to typically know a whole lot about the star, maybe their life history (depends on the level of their fandom). And the star is going to know nothing about that fan.”
The intensity of the feeling, Cooper said, is what makes such a relationship so mystifying. He should know – he’s had his own celebrity encounter.
One day, to his surprise, he spotted the actor Jesse Eisenberg at his local Y, an event he described as two worlds colliding: “I had my academic training, all that stuff kind of in my head that filters out how I see the world, all that on the one hand; and then on the other hand, I had this very visceral experience,” Cooper said. “There was a slight embarrassment, almost a giddiness, almost a fanboy kind of reaction at some point.”
He said he doesn’t consider himself a fanboy: “I’d like to not. But I feel like, in that moment, that’s kind of what happened.”
Even mention of a celebrity sighting or encounter is bound to stop the conversation. “It’s a brush with a person larger-than-life,” said Vance Ricks, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston. “And so, maybe some of the glory from that person rubs off on you.”
He says we therefore irrationally treasure these relationships. “It’s a little funny or ironic to call it a ‘relationship,’ when it’s so unidirectional,” he said. “What you’re often doing is projecting a sense of being understood by that person, or of knowing about that person.”
What does that tell us about the human condition? “Many of us want some kind of attachment,” Ricks said. “And in some cases, we may create that.”
Jancee Dunn felt that attachment, especially when – after she interviewed Stevie Nicks – the rock star graciously invited her to be an overnight house guest. “I thought, ‘Okay, should I? Shouldn’t I?’ It seemed invasive, it seemed weird. I said no, and I got in the cab. And as I’m pulling away, I mean, I couldn’t have been two blocks down the street where I thought, You idiot!”
She feels the same regret decades later, and even wrote about it for The New York Times, where she is a columnist for the Well section. “Even now, if I’m at the grocery store or the pharmacy, and I hear ‘Edge of Seventeen’ or one of Stevie’s hits, I get a pain in my heart,” she laughed.
What would Dunn like to tell Nicks today? “Stevie, if you were to invite me over to your house again, I would happily spend the night, I would clean up in the morning, and I would be a very good guest!” she laughed.
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Story produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Editor: George Pozderec.
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