Placing second with 170.300 at the US Gymnastics Olympic Team Trials, Brody Malone punched his ticket to Paris in the most emphatic way possible. While the path to the French metropolitan wasn’t easy for any of the participants, it was even more challenging for the Stanford Cardinal star.

In an Instagram post shared by NeuFit earlier today, Malone talked about the horrific knee injury last year that cast a daunting shadow on his Paris dream. “My hand just kind of slips off the bar. It’s a fluke accident. That was the first thing that went through my head,” said the 24-year-old about how things went south during a competition in Germany.

The accident, says Malone, caught him by surprise even more so because he started off pretty swell. “I hit all my angles on all my skills,” the gymnast could be heard saying in the IG post before he went on to list all the painful things that came his way soon after. “I ended up landing really funky and dislocating my knee and fracturing my tibial plateau., tore my medial meniscus. Tore my LCL, posterior lateral corner, and partially tore my PCL,” elaborates the 2024 US Championships gold medalist and we’re flinching just hearing about them.

While the magnitude of his injuries was undoubtedly severe, Malone remained unwavering about his ambitions to make it to the national team for the quadrennial event. Luckily, he had people around him who provided him with the necessary support.

Brody Malone wasn’t left alone on his road to redemption

At this year’s Xfinity US Gymnastics Championships, Brody sent out an emphatic message to his foes from the Dickies Arena. After his crash at the World Cup event in March 2023, Malone had to come to terms with having to watch his colleagues perform from the sidelines for the time being. However, his coach Syque Caesar was quick to respond to his student’s panic and assured Brody that he would be back in action soon. “I’m like, you’re coming back for (the all-around). We’ll figure out your gymnastics and we’ll go from there,” Caesar was quoted saying in an article by AP News from May.

Along with Syque, Brody’s father also stepped up to the efforts of helping the gymnast get back to his feet. “My dad is my rock and my go-to for anything. I can rely on him anytime,” said a grateful Brody about his dad after punching his ticket to Paris at the US Team Trials last month. “I want to thank everyone who has helped me reach this point. All the medical staff deserve a big shout-out, especially Steve, my trainer, who works with me for hours each day,” he said further.

Thanks to his restrictions in terms of putting too much pressure on his legs during his recovery journey, Brody had more time to focus on more upper-body-demanding events. With that, Brody could possibly be in better shape than he was three years ago for Tokyo, where he finished 10th overall. But will his wobbly feet be ready for the big show that’s about to go down at the French capital? We’ll just have to wait to see!