Cameron Bock surprise winner of men’s all-around final at 2021 Winter Cup

Michigan senior Cameron Bock seemed to surprise everyone but himself with his all-around win on night one of senior men’s competition at USA Gymnastics’ 2021 Winter Cup in Indianapolis.

“I’ve been working for something like this,” Bock said after the meet. “I saw I was leading after three or four events, and I knew I just had to keep it going. Definitely part of the plan.”

Bock took the lead in the first rotation, posting a 14.350 on vault, and while many challenged for the top spot, he never surrendered it through all six rotations, ultimately earning a 84.150 in the all-around – beating second-place finisher Riley Loos by 0.900.

The fact that Bock started his night on vault might have been a fortunate stroke of serendipity. An event that has “notoriously” been tough for the 2019 Pan Am parallel bars bronze medalist, Bock was able to hone in on hitting that event before turning his focus to the other five apparatus.

“I was definitely, by far, most proud of my vault,” the 22-year-old said. “I broke my ankle pretty badly doing vault at the 2014 Winter Cup, and I’ve just had vault struggles pretty much my entire career. It’s been my worst event, so making those minor changes and doing a great vault today, it felt great to start out with that.” 

The lone Stanford gymnast at the meet, Loos earned the silver with an 83.250 and night one wins on both floor (14.250) and vault (14.750). And while the U.S. men, in general, seem to thrive off of bolstering one another – which they did all night – the fact that the sophomore seemed to be in his own little bubble while rotating by himself didn’t seem to hurt.

Much of the Stanford team has been training at Cypress Academy in Houston, but the recent winter storm that devastated the state of Texas caused them to not be able to attend the meet.

Loos hadn’t been training in Texas, though, rather opting to spend the past year since the pandemic started training in his hometown of Sacramento. As of late, he’s been driving to competitions at Stanford because the 2019 national champion Cardinal has struggled to field a full team since it started its season a couple of weeks ago, but things seem to be looking up for Loos and Stanford, too.

“I’m able to go back to campus after this competition, so my goals are to help my team get back to where we were last year and win a national championship,” Loos said. “But also, for my own goals, I want to make Olympic Trials and hopefully make some international assignments this year, because I feel like I’ve worked hard enough to earn it, and I feel like I proved that to myself today.”

This is the Stanford sophomore’s first time on the U.S. senior national team.

A mistake on high bar cost 2017 World floor medalist and three-time World team member Yul Moldauer a chance at the all-around crown, but he rounded out the top 3 with a 82.600 after debuting a slew of upgrades on almost every event, including a huge 6.4 D-score on parallel bars that helped him to a day one win on that event. As it stands now, he plans to do all-around during Sunday’s meet, which is event-focused.

“Day two I’m definitely going to try to get better on anything – execution-wise,” Moldauer said optimistically. “I want to go for 100% on all the events that I’m [competing], but I’m also going to throw some upgrades on high bar. I’ll do the triple-double [dismount there]. Vault, I’m going to warm-up a [Kas] triple and see how that goes, and then on horse, I just want to go out there and hit another clean set.”

“On floor, instead of doing a two-and-a-half punch half, I’ll do a two-and-a-half punch Rudi. I could’ve done a lot better on floor. For me, to make myself happy coming out of this meet, I want to go out day two and prove that I can get even better and not worse,” the former Oklahoma star laughed.

Following the first day of competition, the top 6 ranked all-around athletes automatically qualified to the 2021 senior national team. Bock, Loos, and Moldauer are joined by Minnesota’s Shane Wiskus (4th – 81.250), Oklahoma’s Allan Bower (5th – 81.150), and Bock’s Michigan teammate Paul Juda (6th – 79.850).

Wiskus had a wild Epke Zonderland-esque save on high bar earlier in the night, catching his opening Cassina with one hand and holding on to post a 13.000 on the event.

Bower was his typical consistent self most of the night and in the mix for the podium, but a mistake on pommel horse in the final rotation knocked him out of contention.

Juda had a good, not great, night with mistakes on high bar (12.850) and pommel horse (12.350) holding him back.

Other notable performances included Alex Diab and Donnell Whittenburg’s still rings performances, with Diab posting the top score of day one with a 14.850 and Whittenburg right behind him with a 14.550.

Notably absent from the rings specialist squad was Brandon Wynn, who was set to make his comeback at this meet but scratched earlier in the week.

Pommel horse specialist Alec Yoder put together a great performance to post a 14.650 on the event, while other U.S. specialist Stephen Nedoroscik suffered a meme-worthy fall to earn a 13.450.

“You win some. You lose some. You breakdance. You backflip. That’ll be the Nedoroscik some day,” the former Penn State star said after the awkward fall.

The senior men’s competition continues on Sunday in Indianapolis with individual men’s event titles up for grabs, based on two-day score totals. That meet will air live on FloGymnastics at 5:30 p.m. ET.

Relive the 2021 Winter Cup – Men’s Day 1 competition with Gymnastics Now’s live blog from the meet here. Click here for full results.

You can watch all of the routines from the event here.