Shane Wiskus has been demonstrably excited this week in Minneapolis, not just because he was back in his home state, but also because the former Gophers All-American was at his best in the U.S. men’s gymnastics Olympic trials.

“I had the best two days of competition in my life,” he said.

Wiskus was performing so well that after sticking the landing on his last event, the parallel bars, he let loose with his most emotional celebration of many over the two days of competition, imploring an already loud partisan crowd to make even more noise.

The performance sealed his third-place finish in the all-around competition and, Wiskus thought, his spot on the five-man team that will travel to Paris for the Summer Games next month. Roughly 45 minutes later, the rug was pulled out from under him.

“I feel like I deserved it,” Wiskus said.

Frederick Richard, a sophomore NCAA champion from Michigan, won the all-around competition with a total score of 170.500 and the automatic Olympic qualification that goes with it. Stanford’s Brody Malone finished second with 170.300 points, and Wiskus was next with 169.850. Wiskus was later named an alternate to the team headed to Paris.

Oklahoma’s Paul Juda (168.850) and Stanford’s Asher Hong (167.650) placed fourth and fifth and made the team, as well. The wild card pick was Wiskus’ EVO Gymnastics teammate Stephen Nedoroscik, a pommel horse specialist who had the event’s second-best score on that apparatus, a combined 29.300.

“I always had it in my head that there was a chance, that there was a chance because I can do a really good score for Team USA on an event that maybe they need,” said Nedoroscik, 25. “So, my single score on that one event adds more to a team than perhaps someone who does multiple events.

“It was always in my head, I just knew it was going to be really hard.”

The U.S. men haven’t won an individual Olympic medal since Danell Leyva won silver in the parallel bars and horizontal bars, and Alexander Naddour won bronze in the pommel horse, in Rio De Janeiro in 2016. The men haven’t won a team medal since a bronze at the 2008 Beijing Games.

“You can expect, from me and the team, some medals in Paris,” said Frederick, who became the youngest man to win the U.S. trials since Steve Hug, also 20, in 1972.

Khoi Young, who placed 15th in the all-around this week but was the all-around bronze medalist at the U.S. Championships in May, joins Wiskus as the other alternate.

Wiskus, 25, didn’t make the 2023 U.S. Championships team, and pulled out of the 2023 Pan American Games because of injuries. But he had bounced back, winning silver in the all-around, and bronze in the floor and high bar, at the 2024 Winter Cup.

At Target Center this week, he had the top composite score on the floor exercise (28.95) and was second in the horizontal bar (29.000). Asked how he felt after learning he wasn’t being selected for the team, he said, “Numb.”

He said performing at home again — he was a three-time NCAA champion at the U — was special. He had cheering sections throughout the arena on Saturday, some holding large cardboard cutouts of his face, some re-enacting a clapping routine for the vault that Wiskus and teammates did during their college days.

“I’ll remember this experience for the rest of my life,” he said. “It’s probably the last gymnastics meet of my life, and what better way to end (than) at home with two of the best competitions of my entire life.”

“I had a lot of family, a lot of friends out there,” he added, “and I just hope my made them proud. It was a hell of a ride.”