Mikulak, seeking 6th U.S. title, aims higher

Fan favorite sets his sights on Olympic all-around gold

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Something akin to boy-band mania broke out when Sam Mikulak set the performance standard on the first of two nights of men’s competition at the U.S. gymnastics championships Thursday at Sprint Center.

“Sam, we love you!” an entire section of teenage girls shrieked, as if Mikulak were a fourth Jonas Brother whose passion was gymnastics, rather than pop music.

Mikulak didn’t showcase his most ambitious routines, but the two-time Olympian achieved exactly what he had hoped, taking a hefty lead midway through the competition. He remains favored to win his sixth U.S. all-around gold.

A natural showman who’s also the country’s best male gymnast, Mikulak, 26, indulged the tweens and teens who rushed to the front few rows and shouted for him to come closer for photos.

“It’s fun having a big, cheering crowd,” said Mikulak, who obliged and borrowed one fan’s cellphone to take a group selfie with outstretched arm as his young fans squeezed into the frame. “It just shows they believe in me, and that kind of faith really helps me put on a show and gives me a lot of comfort.”

For the past several years, Mikulak, of Newport Beach, California, has supplied the star power for the U.S. men’s gymnastics team, which has long been overshadow by the higher-performing American women. It has been 15 years since an American man won the all-around Olympic gold medal; Paul Hamm prevailed at the 2004 Athens Games. And it has been 35 years since the U.S. men won Olympic team gold (at the 1984 Los Angeles Games).

Oklahoma standout Yul Moldauer, the 2017 U.S. champion who is second to Mikulak heading into Saturday’s final, readily acknowledges that the U.S. women are the gold standard .

“They’re just so good,” Moldauer, 22, said of the reigning world and Olympic champions. “The guys’ team wants to be the women’s team. We want to be as successful as them.”

Kayla DiCello, a 15-year-old from Boyds who trains at Hill’s Gymnastics in Gaithersburg, is in second place after the first of two days of junior women’s competition. DiCello posted the top scores on vault and floor, and she was among the top four on beam and bars.

Anya Pilgrim, a 14-year-old teammate of DiCello’s at Hill’s, is sixth. Kelli Hill, the coach and owner of Hill’s Gymnastics, trained three-time Olympian Dominique Dawes as well as Olympians Elise Ray and Courtney Kupets.

Sydney Morris, a 15-year-old from Bowie who trains alongside 2017 world allaround champion Morgan Hurd at First State Gymnastics in Delaware, is 14th.