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Stephen Nedoroscik's unlikely Olympic legend continued to grow on Saturday when the burgeoning viral hero spun his way through an error-free routine on the pommel horse and earned a bronze medal in the event's individual finals at Bercy Arena.

The glasses-wearing engineer from Penn State seized attention at the 2024 Paris Games when he emerged from Zen-like solitude on the sidelines, climbed on the horse and clinched a team bronze for the Americans on Monday.

He was surrounded by teammates as Saturday's competition began and Ireland's Rhys McClenaghan and Kazakhstan's Nariman Kurbanov posted a 15.533 and a 15.433, respectively, to get into gold and silver position in the field's first half.

Nedoroscik performed fifth and scored a 15.300, edging two-time defending gold champion Max Whitlock, who'd scored a 15.200, off the podium. He then waited as the final three gymnasts from Japan, Ukraine and South Korea failed to reach his number.

He's the first U.S. gymnast to win two medals at the same Olympics since Danell Leyva won silver on the parallel bars and high bar in 2016 at Rio de Janeiro. Alex Naddour also earned bronze for the U.S. on the pommel horse in those Games.

Only Frank Haubold (bronze, 1932), Peter Vidmar (silver, 1984) and Tim Daggett (bronze, 1984) had ever medaled on the apparatus prior to Naddour.

It's the first Olympic experience for the 25-year-old Nedoroscik, who was born in Massachusetts and trains out of Sarasota, Florida. He was a world champion on the pommel horse after scoring a 15.266 in 2021 and posted his season-best 15.400 at a World Cup event in Azerbaijan in June.

No other American had ever won a world title on the pommel horse, which he began focusing on in earnest as a pre-teen and took even more seriously once his father, John, purchased a 1980s-era pommel horse at an auction.

"When I got that," he told USA Today in June, "it turned into the family coming over and I'd go show them some stuff."