03/06/26 07:45:00
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03/06 07:44 CST Gymnast Yul Moldauer's 16-month suspension tested his resolve
and reinforced his love for the sport
Gymnast Yul Moldauer's 16-month suspension tested his resolve and reinforced
his love for the sport
By WILL GRAVES
AP National Writer
Yul Moldauer offers no excuses for the 16-month whereabouts suspension he
received from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for missing three drug tests in 2024.
That didn't make looking at his mentions on social media any easier for a
gymnast who has a national title, two world championship medals and an Olympic
appearance on his resume.
"I've read everything online, ?Maybe Yul was doing drugs,'" Moldauer said. "I
have more than 10 years of being clean. It sucks. But at the end of the day,
it's my responsibility."
While Moldauer points out all three of the tests he missed came during the
competition season --- when schedules can get hectic --- and that he
successfully passed spot tests in between the misses, he also knows that it
doesn't matter. He knew the rules and he got sloppy.
"It's just embarrassing," he said.
And now, it's over. Moldauer will return to international competition for the
first time in two years on Saturday when he competes as part of Team USA at the
reimagined American Cup in Henderson, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas.
The event --- which will use the mixed team format that will likely make its
Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games --- includes 43 gymnasts from a
dozen countries, led by Olympic and world champion Daiki Hashimoto of Japan and
Hezly Rivera, the reigning U.S. champion and a member of the star-laden
American team that won gold at the 2024 Paris Games.
It's a particularly stacked field, one that Moldauer is grateful to be a part
of after the 29-year-old's long, winding path back from the brink.
The suspension banned Moldauer from working out at USA Gymnastics-affiliated
gyms. It also cast him adrift.
"I was a little lost, I was not myself," he said. "I was depressed. I was sad.
I was torn."
Relentlessly upbeat when he's on the competition floor --- Moldauer is a
livewire when he salutes the judges, punctuating every dismount with a fist
pump and a "Let's go!" --- finding that spark while eyeing a year-plus away
from the sport that has long defined him has forced him to make some difficult
choices.
He got a job at a factory not far from his home in the Denver suburbs,
requesting a schedule that would let him work a full day by 2 p.m., which freed
up his evenings to train at a local fitness gym alongside weekend warriors,
dadbods and seniors trying to stay in shape.
Moldauer knows he must have "looked like a monkey" while he made his way from
station to station trying to keep his body strong and flexible enough to do
gymnastics without actually doing gymnastics. Leaning into his experience
during the COVID-19 pandemic --- when gyms were shut down for months --- helped.
That doesn't mean it was easy.
"I was walking through hell, being completely torn out of something I've done
for 20-plus years," he said.
Did he think about quitting? Just about every day, particularly when he was
about halfway through the suspension. He watched the vast majority of guys he
grew up competing against move on to the next chapter of their lives and wonder
if maybe it was time for him to do the same. The fear that he couldn't keep
pace with a talented new wave ate at him.
One nagging thought kept him going: a promise he made to himself long ago.
"I've always had one goal in my entire life and that is to get an Olympic
medal," said Moldauer, who was a non-traveling alternate on the 2024 U.S. men's
team that earned a bronze in Paris. "I told myself ?Ten years from now, if I
look back and think about how healthy I felt, do I think I could have pushed
another 2 1/2 years (toward the 2028 Games)?' And I would have said ?Yes, I
should have done that.'"
That was a part of it, to be sure. Yet it wasn't the only factor. Moldauer has
long leaned into being a role model to younger athletes in a division of the
sport that is seemingly constantly under threat of being rendered irrelevant.
If he bailed during his forced sabbatical, he wondered what message that might
send.
"I wanted to go out my way," he said. "I didn't want the suspension to pull me
out. I didn't want that to be the last thing people remembered about me."
So he kept going, returning to competition at an event in Colorado in January,
then finishing second to Frederick Richard at the Winter Cup last month, a
performance that landed him back on the national team. He'll do a couple of
events at the American Cup this weekend, then head to Europe for a World Cup
event where he might do "a little more."
Moldauer views them all as stepping stones. His skills are not where they will
need to be if he wants to make it to Los Angeles. Upgrades are coming this
summer in hopes of making the world championship team.
If there is a silver lining in all this, it's that he's as healthy as he's been
in a long, long time. The back and shoulder problems that dogged him earlier in
his career are gone, replaced by optimism that maybe his best gymnastics are
still ahead of him.
"I feel like my body got a reset, my mind got a reset," Moldauer said. "And
I've got nothing to hide."
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