‘Pommel Horse Guy’ Stephen Nedoroscik Actually Has Two Eye Conditions

After Stephen Nedoroscik swung, twisted, and hovered his body on the pommel horse for 45 riveting seconds on Monday, one thing was clear: He’d just locked down his legacy as the “pommel horse guy” whose performance helped US men’s gymnastics win its first Olympic medal (bronze) in 16 years. But if the now-viral images of the 25-year-old gymnast waiting on the sidelines are any indication, he’ll also go down in history as the team’s beloved glasses guy, almost always seen wearing his chunky black specs.

The Clark Kent comparisons started flying right away: During the team final, Nedoroscik spent hours chillin’ on the sidelines in his glasses—at one point seemingly resting his eyes—only to then take them off and be a hero on the pommel horse. (You could even see him holding his glasses right after, raising them in the air as his teammates lifted him up to celebrate.) It’s just so endearing, perhaps because it’s also so out of place. In a sport that requires the utmost precision, here’s a guy performing at the highest level who also has…vision problems?

Impressively, yes—but not in the way you might think. In Nedoroscik’s Olympics profile, he noted that he has a ritual of wearing sports glasses (the kind that look like goggles) while competing more for “superstitious reasons rather than improving his eyesight,” because he got them as a gift from a friend. He hasn’t whipped these out during the Olympics, though (at least, not yet), and instead has opted to just take his regular glasses off before performing.

Gabriel Bouys/Getty Images

That’s seemingly because he’s gotten used to competing with vision issues. In 2022, Nedoroscik posted a TikTok video in which he explained that he has strabismus. He describes the condition as being cross-sighted before demonstrating how he can “switch his dominant eye on command with both eyes open.” And this week, he commented on the video, noting that he posted it to see if anyone had a similar experience of strabismus, and that he could shift his “world viewpoint from one eye to the other. Like one camera to another [two inches] away.”

Portland, Oregon–based ophthalmologist William Flanary, MD, who goes by Dr. Glaucomflecken online, suggested in his own TikTok video yesterday that Nedoroscik may have esotropia, a type of strabismus where one or both eyes turn inward toward your nose. The common condition is often referred to as being “cross-eyed” and basically involves a failure of muscle and nerve coordination—typically, eyes function in tandem, but with esotropia, they operate separately.

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