Stephen Nedoroscik Is 'Blind' in Bright Light and 'Scared' to Drive. How the Pommel Horse Hero Competes (Exclusive)

Stephen Nedoroscik remembers how hard it was being a kid who couldn't toss a football with friends.

Diagnosed at birth with two eye conditions, the Team U.S.A. Olympic gymnast always had trouble judging distances and seeing in bright light. “In the sunlight, trying to catch a football with no depth perception, you can imagine how difficult that would be,” he tells PEOPLE.

Instead, the 26-year-old turned his attention indoors — to gaming, mastering the Rubik’s Cube (he can solve one in 15 seconds) and gymnastics. After years of dedication to the sport, he won two medals at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. “I never thought my eye conditions would stop me,” he says of living with strabismus and colobomas.

Strabismus is a disorder in which the eyes don’t line up, which can cause three-dimensional and blurry vision, per Cleveland Clinic. Coloboma is an area of missing tissue that can cause vision loss, low vision, and light sensitivity, according to the medical center.

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When Nedoroscik started in the gym at age 4, his limited sight made it hard to perform on the vault and high bar. “I’d miss the bar," he recalls. Eventually, he gravitated to the pommel horse, where “everything is in my hands.”

He learned to tackle the event without his corrective lenses for nearsightedness. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, he won bronze and inspired “Clark Kent/Superman” memes for his glasses-on/glasses-off transformation. “It's just the coolest thing of all time,” he says of going viral. “I just finished my team final and turned on my phone to hundreds of thousands of people talking about me and my eye condition.”

And while he’s proud of his success, he’s equally proud of being a role model for others with similar conditions. While at the Olympics, Nedoroscik met a young boy who also had a coloboma and was nervous about signing up for sports. However, after seeing the gymnast win big at the Olympics, he asked his mom if he could join soccer — with Nedoroscik's encouragement.

“I was like, 'Dude, you can do anything. Just trust yourself and enjoy life, man. You got it,' " he says.
"I love this sport, but being able to give people motivation means the world to me.”

Nedoroscik has learned how to navigate life with cross-vision — even eye surgery at age 8 did not solve the issue. Throughout his childhood, he wore glasses that darken in sunlight.

But with his “huge pupils” due to the coloboma, he’s still easily blinded by light and doesn’t drive. When walking outdoors, Nedoroscik — who lives in Sarasota, Fla., with his girlfriend of eight years, Tess McCracken, 26 — opens his eyes for only a “millisecond” at a time before closing them. “That’s how I navigate.”

And yet he found his way around the dance floor, placing in the top four in this season’s Dancing with the Stars.

The gymnast describes how he navigated unique challenges on the show — from bright lights to a fear of missing the hand of his partner, Rylee Arnold, when reaching out for it — by trusting his ability and "listening to [his] body."

"Towards the end of training these dances, I didn't miss her hand at all because I knew where it was going to be, and I had the confidence to go and reach for it," he says.

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When Nedoroscik uprooted his life in September to move to Los Angeles for the show, he brought along his girlfriend (and their cat, Kyushu). For three months, the couple made the city "home," with McCracken growing increasingly impressed by her boyfriend's dance abilities, especially since she convinced him to join the show in the first place. "She's just the best to have on my side," he says.

The two are now preparing to be apart for the longest time yet as Nedoroscik embarks on the 68-city DWTS tour starting in January as a co-host.

The DWTS adventure “was such a joy," he says — but it was just the start for the Olympic medalist. “I’m thinking of new things I want to pursue."

Read the original article on People