Brody Malone repeats as U.S. all-around gymnastics champion, leads world team

TAMPA — Brody Malone confirmed that he is the leader of a new era of U.S. men’s gymnastics. Donnell Whittenburg showed that his time at the top of the sport isn’t near finished.

Malone repeated as U.S. all-around champion, consolidating his breakout from 2021, when he won his senior nationals debut, then won the Olympic Trials, placed 10th in the Tokyo Olympic all-around and earned a world championships bronze medal on high bar.

The 22-year-old Stanford standout totaled 176.590 points over two nights of competition this week, distancing Whittenburg by 5.019 points. Both Malone and Whittenburg clinched spots on the five-man team for this fall’s world championships. The other three members will be finalized after an October selection camp.

It’s the second-largest margin of victory since the perfect 10 was replaced by an open-ended scoring system in 2006.

Only Sam Mikulak won by a larger amount — 5.55 points for his sixth and final all-around title in 2019. Malone ended Mikulak’s reign last year, and Mikulak retired following his third Olympics. The throne is Malone’s.

“It was never my intention to come in and take over Sam’s spot,” said Malone, a former rodeo competitor and frog gigger from a four-square-mile Georgia hometown. “It just kind of happened. I don’t want that to affect how I approach my gymnastics. I don’t even think about it.”

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In contrast, Whittenburg missed two Olympic teams, changed coaches and moved from Colorado to Wisconsin since the previous time he was runner-up at nationals in 2015. At 28, he can become the oldest U.S. man to win a world championships medal since Blaine Wilson in 2003.

Whittenburg, a world medalist in 2014 and 2015, thinks he would