Asher Hong headlines U.S. men’s 2023 world team

SAN JOSE, Calif. – After two days of competition at the 2023 Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships, the U.S. men’s senior selection committee (SSC) has named its five-man team for the 2023 world championships, set for September 30 to October 8 in Antwerp, Belgium.

The team consists of Asher Hong, Yul Moldauer, Fred Richard, Khoi Young, and Paul Juda. Colt Walker will be the traveling alternate.

While the U.S. championships factored in the domestic bonus system to determine national champions, the world team was based on scores sans bonus aka International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) scoring.

There were no automatic qualifiers to the team. The pool of potential team members included any athletes from all team scoring scenarios from the final results (combined Day 1 and Day 2) that were within two points from the top scoring team, without bonus. Then the decision was based on team scoring scenarios, competition results, and discretionary criteria.

Instead, the five men who will compete in Antwerp, Belgium were chosen based off their two day aggregated score alone which means the selection differed from the championships results themselves.

The potential field of contenders seemingly whittled itself down over the two days of competition at championships, but there were still some big names left off the team, namely 2021 world pommel horse champion Stephen Nedoroscik, 2022 world team member Donnell Whittenburg, and Olympian Shane Wiskus.

All is not lost for those three this season, though, as they were named to the Pan American Games team alongside Colt Walker and Cameron Bock. Vahe Petrosyan will compete as an individual after qualifying by name at the 2021 Junior Pan American Games. The non-traveling alternates are Riley Loos and Curran Phillips.

The Pan American Games team was decided with bonus taken into consideration.

For a recap of U.S. championships, see Day 1 here and Day 2 here.