U.S. gymnast Suni Lee finally feels like she’s back on the right track.
The Tokyo 2020 all-around gold medallist spent the last nearly 12 months adjusting to the realities of a kidney-related health concern that ended her NCAA career at Auburn University early and prevented her from making a run at international competition months later.
Now, she has once again found a consistent rhythm to her training.
“I’ve been back in the gym every single day, eight hours a day, and it’s been going pretty well,” Lee told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview ahead of her 2024 competitive debut at the Winter Cup, Saturday (24 February) in Louisville, Kentucky.
“I’m in remission right now, so I’ve just been getting it under control and starting to work up into routines and getting ready for the season.”
In Louisville, Lee plans to compete on the uneven bars and balance beam only. Her goal there: earn a spot at the upcoming Baku World Cup competition where she can submit an original element she showed the world last month on her social media – a full twisting layout Jaeger catch-and-release move on the uneven bars – to be named in the sport’s rule book.
“I feel really prepared on beam,” Lee said. “Bars… I’m feeling pretty good. We’re kind of just going to get the skill named and then doing a basic bars set. I’m just doing Pak through [to the end of the routine].”
Lee’s confidence ahead of competition belies the struggles she’s faced.
The 20-year-old competed vault and balance beam in August 2023’s U.S. Classic and U.S. Championships, but withdrew from Team USA’s World Championships and Pan Am Games selection competition a month later, ending her season and beginning a difficult five-month period from which she and longtime coach Jess Graba say she’s only recently emerged.
“I had kind of a rough patch, and I was in and out of the gym for about five months,” Lee says.
“It was more just mental, but also trying to figure out my health and just be as healthy as possible coming into the new year because I knew I wanted to not have to worry about it as much, or, like, just make sure that I was going into remission and not going to have a little break out before a big meet.”
But without gymnastics as an outlet, Lee and Graba say times were tough.
“Being depressed,” says Graba in response to a question about how Lee filled her days when she couldn’t make it into practice.
“During that time, I was honestly not doing a lot of anything good for me, I was just kind of rotting in my bed and hoping that it would all go away,” adds Lee, later saying, “Things are definitely way better now. Of course, I still have to go to the doctors every couple of weeks. I just got an infusion. But they said that I’ve been progressing a lot.
“I’ve been able to wake up every single day and I’m perfectly fine,” she continued. “I also have been doing this for long enough now, I think, to know the right time to take my medicine, to be able to be perfect for in the morning.”
