Upstart Veteran Chris Brooks 1 Step Away from Realizing Unexpected Olympic Dream

At 29 years old, Chris Brooks is practically a dinosaur in the world of men's gymnastics, but one more strong performance Saturday night in St. Louis could put him on his way to Rio de Janeiro to represent the United States at the 2016 Olympics.

Brooks was an alternate for the USA men's gymnastics team at the 2012 Olympics in London and faced a difficult decision after not getting to compete in those Games.

"Being an alternate was awesome but being that close and not getting a spot, I felt like later in life I'd be upset if I called it quits," Brooks recently told Stu Durando of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "But gymnastics is not easy and once you hit 25 or 26, it can be a real issue."

Brooks missed the 2013 and 2014 national championships due to injuries, but these past two years have been a renaissance at the end of his career, jump-started with a third-place finish at nationals in 2015.

"Every time you think he's down because of injuries or whatever the situation is, he resurrects himself and proves he's still a factor," USA Gymnastics executive Dennis McIntyre told David Barron of the Houston Chronicle.

On Thursday night in St. Louis, he was a factor. Brooks had the second-highest all-around score among the 18 gymnasts attempting to make the USA team.

But what does that score actually mean?

Let's start from the top to make sure we're all on the same page, because the selection process and roster construction are a bit confusing.

There are a total of six events in the men's gymnastics: parallel bars, high bar, pommel horse, floor exercise, still rings and vault. Five gymnasts (plus three alternates) will be selected to represent Team USA in Rio. From those five athletes, head coach Kevin Mazeika must pick three athletes to compete on each apparatus.

For the men's team gymnastics event, some three-man combination of the five gymnasts will compete on the different apparatus. Thus, the more areas where a gymnast excels, the better his chances of being selected.

Those five gymnasts are selected from a group of 18 who are competing at the P&G Gymnastics Championships (Nationals), which began three weeks ago in Hartford, Connecticut, and wraps up Saturday in St. Louis.

Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

For Sam Mikulak, Donnell Whittenburg and Alex Naddour, these trials are little more than a formality.

Despite falling on his dismount on the parallel bars and struggling on the high bar Thursday night, Mikulak is a lock for Rio who will likely compete in every event except for the still rings. Whittenburg also had some missteps in the Gateway to the West, but he has already been penciled in for four of the six events. And Naddour is hands down the best option for pommel horse—which is Team USA's biggest weakness of the six events.

Barring injury, those three gymnasts will be wearing the red, white and blue in Rio.

But that leaves two spots on the roster up for grabs, and Brooks is making one heck of a push for one of them.

The selection committee (more on that term and its purpose shortly) will make its picks based loosely on a combination of scores posted at Nationals and at these trials. And through three of those four legs, Brooks ranks second to only Mikulak:

Unfortunately for Brooks, that score doesn't necessarily mean a doggone thing. It looks nice and shows he's a jack of all trades, but he needs to prove he can be a master of a couple of them.

The selection committee will certainly use the scores in the decision-making process, but it ultimately boils down to a need to choose gymnasts who excel at a specific combination of the events, since they'll only actually be used on a few of them.

According to the collective opinion of the NBC Sports announcing crew (comprised of Nastia Liukin, Tim Daggett and Al Trautwig), here's a breakdown of which spots have likely already been spoken for and which ones are still there for the taking:

Event	High Bar	Parallel Bars	Pommel Horse	Still Rings	Floor Exercise	Vault
Gymnast #1	Sam Mikulak	Sam Mikulak	Sam Mikulak	Donnell Whittenburg	Sam Mikulak	Sam Mikulak
Gymnast #2	TBD	Donnell Whittenburg	Alex Naddour	TBD	Donnell Whittenburg	Donnell Whittenburg
Gymnast #3	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD

The announcing crew said Brooks is battling John Orozco and Danell Leyva for the right to represent USA on pommel horse, parallel bars and high bar. Between the three legs of scoring, his average score on high bar and parallel bars is the best of the trio, but pommel horse was his weakness Thursday night, where he has the lowest average score of that group.

In other words, it's still anybody's guess what the final roster will look like, but Brooks made quite the impression Thursday.

"His Olympic journey might be getting a little bit closer," shouted Daggett after Brooks completed the fourth of his six routines.

It was pretty clear Brooks can taste how close he is as well. The pommel horse was the final leg of his evening, and after his dismount, Brooks erupted in a series of guttural screams and fist pumps.

Not long before Brooks' finale, NBC Sports conducted an interview with Paul Hamm of 2004 Olympics fame. Asked for memories of his experiences with the US Trials, Hamm said it is even bigger than the Olympics in terms of the tension and the raw emotion on display as years of hard work boil down to one big shot to represent your country.

And that sentiment was echoed in Brooks' enthusiastic reaction to his performance.

"Tonight, (Brooks) proved himself in all six events," said Liukin.

As Brooks was about to begin his first routine of the evening (still rings), Liukin recounted an earlier conversation with him: "If I can hit 12 routines here, no matter what happens with the selection process, I will have done everything that I could, and I'm satisfied with that."

Six down, six to go. And if Saturday goes as well as Thursday did, Brooks should be satisfied with the selection process.