Moldauer, Team USA Qualify for Olympics and Worlds Finals

NORMAN — Oklahoma alum Yul Moldauer and Team USA advanced to Wednesday's team finals at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, early this morning. The guaranteed top-eight finish at the championships qualified Team USA men's gymnastics to the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Moldauer along with OU head coach Mark Williams, serving as Team USA's coach at the meet, and 2017 OU graduate Allan Bower, the team's traveling alternate, began competition in the subdivision five qualifications at 3 a.m. CT Monday morning. The U.S. men finished with 250.359 points to hold seventh place heading into finals.

"We had a little trouble, floor and (pommel) horse were a bit of an issue," said Williams. "In the end, finishing third (after five subdivisions) as a team is about where we expected to be.

"We'll advance to team finals and be qualified to the Olympic Games. Those are goals that we established as a team." - Mark Williams

"Going into the finals, we're going to try to reset and hope that we have a better day when it's three-up, three-count. We're hoping we're a little more like our training. I felt pretty good and felt like the guys were looking pretty good, so I'm hoping we can go out there and do what we do, put it all out there and see what happens."

Moldauer competed all-around for the squad, posting an 82.989 11th-place performance that led Team USA and landed him in Friday's individual all-around final.

Moldauer put together his best routines on vault and floor exercise with respective scores of 14.533 and 14.466. He led the U.S. men on floor and was second-best on vault, rings (13.800) and parallel bars (14.400). The 2017 world medalist narrowly missed advancing to the floor exercise event final, finishing 10th on the event with just the top eight qualifying on to the final. He will be the second reserve to the final.

2015 alum and NCAA pommel horse national champion for the Sooners in '15, Michael Reid, also competed on Monday morning for Team Jamaica. Reid competed as an individual for Jamaica in the qualification rounds and tallied a 13.100 on horse to finish 47th.

The U.S. men compete in the team finals on Wednesday morning at 6:45 a.m. CT. The meet will be broadcast on the Olympic Channel and a livestream is available via the NBC Sports App. The men's all-around will take place Friday morning at 9 a.m. CT, also scheduled to air on the Olympic Channel and the NBC Sports App.

For updates and more information on Oklahoma men's gymnastics, follow the Sooners on Twitter and Instagram (@OU_MGymnastics) and like Oklahoma Men's Gymnastics on Facebook.

2019 World Championships Schedule
Date	Event	Time (CT), Channel
Mon. Oct. 7	Team USA Men's Qualifying	3 a.m., Olympic Channel
Wed. Oct. 9	Men's Team Final	6:45 a.m., Olympic Channel
Fri. Oct. 11	Men's All-Around Final	9 a.m., Olympic Channel