Orsa Moldauer remembers watching her son Yul on the playground after school. Then 7 years old, Yul and a group of his friends took turns going across a set of monkey bars.
“All the other kids’ legs would swing back and forth as they tried to get across those monkey bars, but not Yul’s,” Orsa said. “His legs were completely straight and still. It was like he was floating across.”
It was all Orsa needed to see.
Soon after she enrolled Yul in a children’s gymnastics class near their home just outside Fort Collins.
Yul has come a long way since that day on the playground, from swinging on the playground to making it to the Olympic Games.
Once a child in need of an outlet, Yul is now a young man about to represent the United States on the international stage.
• • •
Growing up on a farm in northern Larimer County, Yul was adopted by Orsa and Peter Moldauer from South Korea three months after he was born.
The Moldauers’ kept his birth name as his middle name (Kyung Tae) and changed his first name to Yul. Peter and Orsa already had two daughters with medical issues, and now their son, Yul, followed suit.
Their younger daughter, Sorcha, had dyslexia and a birth injury that severed her brachial plexus. Their youngest son, Sundo, also adopted from South Korea, has mild cerebral palsy and needed extensive physical therapy to learn how to walk.
Yul, meanwhile, had to go to speech therapy because he didn’t start talking until he was three-and-a-half years old. He also had a strong, wincing cry to the point where other parents would ask them, “Why is your son acting like that?” At a kids museum in Chicago, his deafening cries carried over hundreds of children’s voices.
In the summertime, Orsa would take him outside to the car, crank up the air conditioning and try to calm him down. Nothing seemed to work.
Yul struggled. His parents struggled. They decided he needed something — anything ??” to focus his energy. They never thought that enrolling him in a gymnastics class at age 7 would change their son’s life forever.
He quickly rose up the ranks and secured a place on the Junior National Team at age 9.
Once his talent became apparent, the Moldauers bought a house in Arvada, close to a gym in Wheat Ridge where Yul worked out, to avoid the long drive back and forth every day. That commitment paid off.
For Yul, gymnastics was no longer an extracurricular activity. He was pursuing his dream. But, dreams come with costs — in this instance two-a-day practices, injuries, long drives, a family split between two cities.
“I always told myself, no matter where I came from, what I look like or what my past is, if I make it a goal to work hard, it’s not going to be easy,” said the seven-time NCAA individual champion at Oklahoma, four-time All-American and world championship medalist.
“It’ll be crazy at times, but if I really want it that bad, I can accomplish anything.”
• • •
People never stopped pointing out to Yul that he was different.
He and gymnastics teammate Isaac Xiong, a Hmong American from Laos, were two of the only people of color in their third-grade class. One day at school, their teacher asked the entire class, “Who are the outliers in this room?” A handful of students pointed at Moldauer and Xiong.
“My claws came out after Yul came home and told me that,” Orsa said.
There were other incidents that he brushed aside: a white woman telling him to “go back to China,” social media commenters saying he “doesn’t even look American,” and other, more passive, interactions when race was unnecessarily brought a conversation.
“At the end of the day, they’re just saying words,” he said. “Thankfully, I’ve never been physically attacked, but at the end of the day I represent the entirety of the United States and if they knew that, I don’t think they would make those comments.”
Something changed in 2020, however, when the COVID-19 pandemic saw fellow Asian-Americans become the targets of increased numbers of hate crimes. During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, crimes against Asian-Americans jumped nearly 150%, according to an analysis by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. A Stop AAPI Hate national report listed nearly 3,800 incident reports from March 2020 to February 2021.
Yul decided he could no longer let things slide.
“When I put ‘USA’ on my chest when I compete, it hurts to know that I have to represent people like that,” he stated in a post on social media. “It’s not like I was in South Korea since I was a teenager and then all of sudden decided to come here. I’ve lived here my entire life, but it should never be that way anyway. You should never look at someone and assume.”
• • •
In a world where Yul already felt different from others, gymnastics became his escape.
“He’s just so proud to be representing the U.S.A, I hope people know that when they watch him,” Orsa said. “He’s told me a number of times how strongly he feels about that.”
Yul values his hard-working ethic, his pursuit to be the best and being a good person above everything else.
“Without my coaches, family, friends, teammates and the Colorado community in general, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now,” he said. “Without me being adopted into my family years ago, my life would be completely different.”
In Tokyo, when he thinks of his family before stepping out on the mat, he’ll also think about the young athletes and fellow Asian-Americans watching a South Korean adoptee represent the United States.
The kid swinging on the monkey bars now hopes to inspire millions.
“I hope it gives other young kids — how I was years ago ??” the hope and belief that it doesn’t matter what you look like or where you came from, you’re part of the United States and you can represent this country like I am now,” he said.
Moldauer bio
Name: Yul Moldauer
Sport: Men’s Gymnastics, All-Around
Age: 24
Hometown: Fort Collins, Colorado
High School: Golden HS
College: Oklahoma University ’19
Club: 5280 Gymnastics
Career Highlights: 2020 Olympian, led the Sooners to three consecutive NCAA titles (2016-18), became the second freshman in NCAA history to win the national title in the all-around in 2016, 3x American Cup Champion, 4x Junior Olympic National Championships medalist, 11x Winter Cup Challenge medalist, 2019 Nissen-Emory Trophy Winner, 2017 U.S. All-Around National Champion, 18x All-America honoree, second place in the all-around at 2021 Olympic Trials.
