When Yul Moldauer competes in the Olympics next month, he might very well recall the woman in the white Suburban. As a member of the Men's Gymnastics Team, he'll be representing her.
The driver of the white Suburban recently pulled up beside him, looked at him and yelled, “Go back to China.”
The incident is one of the thousands of anti-Asian attacks that have arisen since the pandemic hit the United States.
“It shouldn’t be normal,” Moldauer told The Oklahoman. “Asian Americans shouldn’t have to go through the name calling, the stereotypes and the jokes.”
Moldauer, along with teammates Brody Malone, Sam Mikulak and Shane Wiskus, will represent the U.S. at the Olympics in Japan that starts July 23. Alec Yoder will join them in Tokyo as an individual competitor. The U.S. will also bring five alternates, an increased number due to COVID-19 precautions.
Moldauer finished with a score of 168.600 at the Olympic trials held Saturday in St. Louis. He punched his ticket to Tokyo with a second-place finish overall and top-three finishes in parallel bars, pommel horse, floor exercise and still rings.
Moldauer led the University of Oklahoma to three straight NCAA titles and won seven individual titles of his own during his collegiate career. He was also the 2017 U.S. national champion. Although he graduated in 2019, he continued to train inOklahoma with hopes of making the Olympics in 2020. The coronavirus pandemic delayed his dream until this year.
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| Yul Moldauer competes on the still rings. |
“Looking back, I definitely went through discrimination that I didn’t know was discrimination at the time,” Moldauer said in an interview on the Today Show. “It wasn’t like every day, but it was like, ‘You’re only good at gymnastics because you’re Asian,’ because at the time people thought Asians had the best body types for gymnastics.
“There were times I didn’t really understand discrimination. But at the same time, if I wasn’t a gymnast and was an average Asian American, I might have seen the discrimination more. Gymnastics has given me a better opportunity, and people can see something in my life that isn’t just related to the color of my skin.”
Moldauer was adopted from South Korea as a baby boy by Peter and Orsa Moldauer, and grew up on their farm outside Fort Collins, Colorado.
The Moldauers renamed their son, Yul Kyung Tae Moldauer, named after the actor Yul Brynner because her new baby boy had almost no hair.
“I couldn’t be more blessed,” Moldauer said in a 2019 article in The Oklahoman. “I think, ‘What if I didn’t get adopted? What if I didn’t do gymnastics? What would my life look like?’
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US GYMNASTICS From left: Brody Malone, Sam Mikulak, Yul Moldauer, Shane Wiskus and Alec Yoder pose for a photo after being named to the U.S. Olympic Team on June 26 in St. Louis. |
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