Sam Mikulak’s age has become a running joke lately. And with the clock winding down on his gymnastics career, Mikulak, the 28-year-old former NCAA champion at Michigan, clearly is in on the gag as he tries to stick his final landing.
The two-time Olympian is in St. Louis this week for the USA Gymnastics’ Olympic trials, which run Thursday through Sunday. And while much of the attention will be focused on Simone Biles and the rest of the competition on the women’s side, Mikulak is the most experienced gymnast at the trials.
None of the other U.S. men competing in St. Louis has ever made an Olympic team, and some — like current Michigan standout Paul Juda — were still in elementary school when Mikulak made his first one back in 2012. So after announcing last summer that he planned to retire after this summer’s delayed Tokyo Games, Mikulak has decided to have some fun with his senior status.
“I was thinking about just walking out with a cane,” he says, “and just fully embracing it.”
Seriously, though, he has embraced his role as the elder statesman for the U.S. men, with the recent national championships serving as a ceremonial passing of the torch. Mikulak is a six-time U.S. national all-around champion (2013-16, 2018-19), but it was Brody Malone, a 21-year-old junior at Stanford, who stole the show three weeks ago in Fort Worth, Texas.
Malone, who won his second NCAA all-around title and led the Cardinal to the team title in April, cruised to the men’s all-around title at U.S. nationals, finishing comfortably ahead of Yul Moldauer and Mikulak.
“That kid is the future,” said Mikulak, who rebounded from a shaky opening-night performance — it was his first competition in 15 months — to claim the bronze medal. “I’m just this old guy trying to keep up with him now.”
Scars and stripes
This old guy has been the lone constant for the American men for the last decade, dating to his time at Michigan, where he won the NCAA all-around title as a freshman in 2011 and led the Wolverines to back-to-back NCAA team championships in 2013-14.
He has the scars — and the scar tissue — to prove it, too. All the torn ligaments in his hands, the matching set of broken ankles, the partially-torn Achilles tendon, the bone chip that’s still floating around in his elbow. And all the heartbreak, too, with stumbles and tumbles and failures magnified by the moment at world championships and two Olympics along the way.
The U.S. men famously flopped in the team final in London (2012) and Rio de Janeiro (2016), but Mikulak has endured his share of personal nightmares as well. Like at the 2018 world championships, where Mikulak was in contention for the all-around title until he lost his grip in a high-bar routine — his best event — and finished fifth. He called that “the biggest disappointment” of his career, one that left him shaking his head, saying, “You should’ve done it, man. You had your chance.”
He’s giving himself one more chance now, and it’s one he wasn’t sure he’d get a year ago, when the pandemic forced the postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Beyond the tenuous delay, there were more injuries to consider, including a wrist injury that he couldn’t shake. Cortisone shots offered only a brief respite, and a three-month break with gyms closed due to the coronavirus offered a new revelation of sorts.
“It was just becoming so clear that my body really can’t hold up,” Mikulak said.
Not for another Olympic cycle, anyway. Even if the 2024 Paris Olympics are only three years away now.
As it is, his daily training regimen includes an hour of rehab, an hour of manual therapy and an hour of strength and conditioning work.
“And then I still have to do gymnastics,” laughed Mikulak, the California native who got started in the sport at age 2 as the son of college gymnasts and really never stopped. “I never had to do all of that just to do gymnastics.”
One more time
Still, he feels prepared to do what it takes this week at the Olympic trials, where he’s vying to become the first U.S. gymnast to compete at three Olympics since Blaine Wilson in 2004. The top two finishers at trials earn automatic berths on the U.S. team and a selection committee will name the rest of the four-man squad plus an individual competitor headed to Tokyo. (Another Michigan All-American, Cameron Bock, is in the field along with Juda this week.)
“I’m gonna give it everything I’ve got, the way that I’ve always done it," Mikulak said. "It’s just the ‘ask’ on my body is so much more now than it ever has been. And I just don’t want to do this for three more years.”
Instead, he’s looking forward to a wedding in October and a move to Charlotte, where longtime girlfriend Mia Atkins is a morning TV show host. Beyond that, he’s contemplating a variety of career plans, including coaching.
But until then, he says he’s determined to make the most of his golden year as an athlete. Even if it ends without an Olympic medal, which he now realizes is something that was holding him back in the prime of his career. The stress of living up to expectations. The fear of failure. Allowing his identity to get wrapped up in all of that is something he’ll no longer do.
With age, he says, comes wisdom.
“Everything I’ve done in gymnastics is enough for me right now,” Mikulak said. “And I was actually somewhat happy that I was able to come to that type of decision, because for so long I felt like gymnastics really wasn’t going to be fulfilling until I’ve gotten my Olympic medal.
“And during quarantine, I had this whole revelation where, ‘You know what? I am happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I am not doing gymnastics. So even if I don’t accomplish these goals, I am still going to be so damn happy.’”
