Who is Frederick Richard? The TikTok star who led Team USA to a bronze medal in gymnastics
After helping Team USA to secure its first medal in men’s team gymnastics in almost two decades, we’ve got to ask just who is Frederick Richard?
Men’s gymnastics is something that the United States has not dominated for some time and while the men’s team did not manage to win the gold medal or silver, their bronze medal effort has achieved two things. Firstly, the nation’s first medal in almost two decades, and secondly the arrival of a genuine star.
Frederick Richard helps Team USA to a first medal in almost 20 years
“I’d always look at that like, ‘Man, what if I was one of those people who made it?’ And now we are. It’s crazy.” Those were the words Frederick Richard spoke when recalling the posters of the 2008 U.S. men’s gymnastics team which won the bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing. On Monday, Richard’s team-best performances in the floor, parallel bars, and horizontal bar were instrumental in securing the bronze medal in the men’s team competition for Team USA which marks the country’s first since 2008. Japan took gold after narrowly beating China.
“You look at these guys, you’re like, ‘Wow, these guys are amazing,’” Richard said of past U.S. medal-winning teams. “When I watch their routines back, it looks like they all came together on a day and just did perfect routines and you’re like, how is that possible? How did they all come together on a day and just do amazing? ...It seems really hard when you compete so many times a year and (it doesn’t always) go the way you want it, but we just all felt something today. We could see it, we could all feel it through each other and we did exactly what I did not doubt was possible, was just all come together on one day and shine.” Richard, who is currently a junior at Michigan, started Team USA’s opening rotation on the rings with a score of 14.033 and scored 14.4 or better in his other three events.
From TikTok to Paris 2024
Of course, it may be that you’ve already heard Frederick Richard’s name and long before you saw him in the Olympics. If that’s the case it means you probably came across his social media account on TikTok which is named ‘FrederickFlips’. It was the creation of a 16-year-old Frederick Richard who found himself stuck at home during the global pandemic of 2020 with a whole lot of energy and no way to spend it. What did he do? Richard began posting videos on TikTok of himself performing all manner of gymnastic feats in his family’s living room. From handstands to flips and a whole host of increasingly difficult types of push-ups.
For context, Richard turned 16 amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. Stuck at home with an excess of teenager energy, Richard started posting videos on TikTok of gymnastics feats from the family’s living room: one-handed handstands, a montage of increasingly challenging push-ups, flips onto the furniture. As you can probably guess, it wasn’t long before the word started to spread. “He realized what an impact he was having just from the comments from little boys being so excited and motivated by him that he wanted to take this further,” said Richard’s mother Anne-Marie.
The young gymnast would later ask his parents to pay for social media classes and not long after, the above-mentioned ‘FrederickFlips’ was born. What followed was content that showcased his witty, funny, and above all energetic personality which only developed further once he accepted a gymnastics scholarship from the University of Michigan. Indeed, it was at that point that his videos gained greater depth as well as he began to invite other Michigan athletes to try various challenges including simple gymnastic movements such as high jumps and backflips.
It didn’t stop there either as he began to enlist the help of his gymnastics teammates in some of the challenges including flipping into a pair of shorts. There was, however, one ‘stunt’ that drew the ire of his mother. Indeed, after walking on his hands on a treadmill while a teammate set the speed higher and higher, he received a stern text message from his mother. “I immediately texted him, like, ‘That is dumb, don’t ever do that again.’ He’s like, ‘Mom, it’s not as bad as it looks. I know what I’m doing,’” Anne-Marie said with a laugh. Ultimately, it appears that whether it was his TikTok videos, the training at Michigan or his obvious dedication, it’s all paid off for Frederick Richard. Today, the 20-year-old has more than 790,000 followers on TikTok and another 500k on Instagram, but there is no doubt that his biggest achievement to date, is the bronze medal he just won in Paris which likely won’t be the last medal he wins in his promising career.