Whether on a rodeo horse or a pommel horse, 21-year-old Brody Malone can make it look easy.
But competition is hard, even for NCAA champions and Olympic contenders, whether they are on the national stage in Fort Worth, Texas, St. Louis, Missouri, or on the world stage in Tokyo.
Brody, a 2018 graduate of Trion High School in Georgia and a two-time collegiate gymnastics national champion, faced his competition with humility and grit in Tokyo in his first Olympic Games. After placing 10th in the men’s individual all-around final on Wednesday, he is being called America’s men’s gymnastic breakout star (the all-around competition features six events: pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, high bar and floor exercise).
He is among the favorites to compete for gold next week in the individual high bar.
Brody’s father, J.D. Malone, credits Brody’s mother, Tracy Malone, for the inspiration behind his gymnastic dreams. Tracy Malone died after a four-plus-year battle with breast cancer in 2012, a month before Brody’s 13th birthday. She was 37.
Brody chose gymnastics over baseball when he was 12 and put aside his rodeo dreams – J.D. was a college rodeo competitor at the University of Tennessee, Martin – after his freshman year at Trion High School.
“She was his motivator,” J.D. Malone said on Thursday afternoon about Brody’s early love for gymnastics. “As a father who grew up playing baseball and football, gymnastics wasn’t really on my radar. [The Olympics] was his dream with his mother, and she helped to make it happen. She was not physically there, but she was with us the whole time.”
Brody attached a pink ribbon on the backpack he carried to meets to keep his mother close and stay focused on the ultimate goal – a trip to represent his country in the Olympic Games.
“I want to do it for her,” he told reporters after qualifying for the Olympics in June, a dream Tracy frequently referenced after enrolling Brody in gymnastics at the age of 3. “This has been a goal of mine for as long as I can remember. Every day, I’d come to the gym to do this.”
After a national championship-winning career in junior gymnastics, Brody picked Stanford University as his college of choice and has helped the Cardinal win a national title. His specialty is the rings. And this week, he made history with a rare “double-double” move on the parallel bars that the announcers simply called “The Malone” since he was the first competitor to try the demanding trick in a major international competition.
His success attracted the global spotlight – he finished ninth in the rings earlier this week – and his journey to Olympic glory is not lost on his father.
“I’ve tried to stay away from the word ‘pride’ because I’ve always been proud of Brody,” his father said. “‘Joy’ is a great word, because to see anyone achieve the lifetime goals they have worked all their life for is amazing, but to see your child do it is incredible.”
Not being able to travel to Tokyo and share the experience with his son has weighed heavily on J.D. Malone.
“It’s been hard, but it can’t be something you dwell on,” he said. “Of course you want to be there, and with all that’s happened, if you think about not being there it can make you really sad.”
Despite the 13-hour time difference between Georgia and Japan, J.D. Malone said he has not missed a moment.
“We all feel like we’re a part of it because we’re such a close-knit group,” he said. “I just got off a FaceTime call with Brody. We talk about two times a day.”
And considering the obstacles and sacrifices made along this Olympic journey, enjoying the finish line is a certainty.
For all of them, mom included.
“I’m not a very emotional person, and Brody is not very emotional either, but I’ve had two really tearful moments: When he won the NCAA championship and when he was at the Olympics trials when he made the team. Those really stick out,” Malone said. “We talk about her a lot. In a lot of ways she’s still with us because we remember all the good times. She’s there. She sees what’s going on [in Tokyo], and she’s a part of it.”
You bet she is, and she has been all along.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com.
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Jay Greeson