U.S. Gymnastics Championships: What to watch on Thursday

The four-day U.S. Gymnastics Championships begin Thursday at 7 p.m. ET with the first of two nights of men’s competition, live on Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA and streaming on NBCSports.com/live, the NBC Sports app and Peacock.

Reigning U.S. all-around champion Brody Malone is one of three Tokyo Olympians in the field in Tampa, along with 2017 U.S. all-around champion Yul Moldauer and Shane Wiskus.

All of the men are competing for national titles and for spots on the five-man team for this fall’s world championships, which will be finalized after an October selection camp.

The U.S. all-around champion — combining scores from Thursday and Saturday — automatically gets a spot on the world team. So does this week’s all-around runner-up, should he also be in the top three on at least two of the six individual apparatuses.

The year after an Olympics often marks a new era. That may be the case here after the retirement of three-time Olympian Sam Mikulak, who competed at every nationals from 2012 through 2021 (with six all-around titles).

In Tokyo, the U.S. men placed fifth as a team and earned zero medals for the first time since 2000. An emphasis is being placed on routine difficulty to make up the gap to world powers China, Japan and Russia (whose athletes are banned indefinitely from international competition for the war in Ukraine).

Stanford’s Malone displaced Mikulak as the top U.S. man last year, was 10th in the Olympic all-around and earned a high bar bronze medal at the world championships in October.

Moldauer was fourth in the world championships all-around (which Malone skipped), the top finish for an American man since 2010.

Stephen Nedoroscik, after missing the Olympic team, became the first American to win a