Paul Juda Cries After Securing Workforce USA Spot for 2024 Paris Olympics

Paul Juda shed tears after incomes his means into the 2024 Paris Olympics.

On Saturday, June 29, the 22-year-old athlete secured his spot on Workforce USA after putting fourth with 168.850 factors on the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials, based on NBC Sports activities.

Opening as much as reporters instantly after the very best scores have been introduced, Juda turned emotional, tearing up as the gang in Minneapolis cheered for him as he tried to carry again tears of pleasure.

“I solely had one aim, and it was to hit all my routines and depart right here wholesome,” Juda informed NBC following his closing occasion, holding flowers and standing subsequent to his future Olympic teammate Asher Hong.

“So, I am glad to do this and extra,” he completed, earlier than shouting: “Go, Workforce USA!”

Juda, an alum of the College of Michigan and a 2023 World group bronze medalist, will be part of his 4 teammates as he travels to Paris to compete in July.

“My telephone’s blowing up and I’m excited about how I’m going to hug my mother and pa,” he informed NBC proper after it was introduced he had secured his spot at his first Olympics. “Each time I take into consideration the phrase Olympian … it is only a lot. Yeah, I can not even put it into phrases.”

Juda’s 4 teammates — Hong, Frederick Richard, Brody Malone and Stephen Nedoroscik — will now strategize on how greatest to strategy the competitors in Paris.

“Now it is simply placing our heads collectively and determining the place we greatest slot in so far as our efficiency and what occasions we will be doing,” Malone beforehand informed PEOPLE.

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is right here! How shortly are you able to clear up it? Play now!

Talking to PEOPLE on Saturday, Juda, additionally an NCAA ground train champion, stated that he started to tear up the second he heard the primary syllable of his title introduced over the loudspeaker system.

“I want I might say I used to be calm, cool and picked up,” Juda stated. “I would’ve been that on the skin, however my coronary heart was simply pounding.”

“I used to be the primary title known as, and the second I heard ‘Pa—,’ I began crying straight away,” Juda informed reporters.

By no means miss a narrative — join PEOPLE’s free day by day e-newsletter to remain up-to-date on the perfect of what PEOPLE has to supply, from celeb information to forcing human curiosity tales.

The primary-time Olympian additionally informed reporters that he had hoped for this second for years — and even wrote down his aim on a imaginative and prescient board to assist maintain him on monitor.

“I am actually glad that I wrote on my whiteboard — ‘Turn out to be an Olympian,’ ” Juda stated by way of his tears. “I had fell quick on a pair different targets that I wrote on that whiteboard and I used to be beginning to assume if I ought to erase the one which stated Olympian as a result of I assume perhaps it will not come true.”

“However I’m going residence and I’m placing a large verify mark on there, and I am glad that it went there, that I stored it there,” he stated.