PARIS — Suni Lee leaned over, with her hands on her knees as she watched every move Simone Biles made on the floor at Bercy Arena.
The 2020 Olympic all-around champion moved from crouching over to jumping up to stand on her toes, cheering loudly throughout. Then back to leaning over again. She couldn’t stay still. Her excitement was palpable.
Throughout the 75 seconds of Biles’ routine, Lee held the second spot in the women’s gymnastics all-around standings, and as soon as Biles landed her first tumbling pass — the triple-twisting double tuck named after Biles in the code of points — Lee knew she would be bumped down to third.
But she was thrilled for her teammate. For Lee, simply being able to return to the Olympics was a gold-medal-worthy accomplishment. And winning a medal of any color was the icing on the cake.
“It has taken so much,” Lee said after the meet. “I was telling everyone today that I really didn’t think that I could get on the podium. It is crazy that I’m even here.”
Lee was the surprise all-around gold medalist in Tokyo three years ago after Biles withdrew from the competition. Lee, then 18, became a global superstar overnight. But Lee’s road back to the Olympics hasn’t been easy. Her sophomore season at Auburn was derailed by a kidney condition in March of 2023 and for months, as she battled symptoms, she wasn’t sure if she would ever compete again.
She gradually became healthier, slowly but surely making her way back. First to training, then to elite competition and then back to the Olympics, helping lift the American squad to a redemptive team gold on Tuesday and to her own individual bronze in the all-around on Thursday. She will have two more chances at medals on Sunday and Monday, after qualifying to the bars and beam event finals.
“Medals are nice and that’s fun, but being here is the biggest thing.” Jess Graba, Lee’s longtime coach, said after the meet. “What she went through and [what] she is still going through, she’s just such a fighter. So I can’t say much else other than, I always bet on her. I told her that too. ‘I always put my money on you. You always fight.’ So that’s what it is. And she wanted it, so she went out and got it.”
LEE BECAME INSTANTLY famous after the last Olympics, and she capitalized on it with an appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” an invitation to the uber-exclusive Met Gala and a slew of other high-profile opportunities. From there she went to Auburn, where she was immediately one of the recognizable faces on campus.
She had committed to the school long before standing on the podium in Tokyo (Graba’s twin brother Jeff is the head coach for the Tigers) and didn’t expect to be Sunisa Lee, Olympic champion.
Because of the fame and the relentless attention, it wasn’t exactly the college experience she had envisioned. In an interview with Sports Illustrated last month, Lee said she was unable to attend class in-person because of security concerns and struggled to bond with her teammates.
“A lot of the girls weren’t the nicest to me,” Lee said. “I just really felt like an outcast, almost. They didn’t treat me that well. I just knew that I couldn’t trust them.”
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Despite all that, she thrived in competition, winning the 2022 NCAA title on balance beam and finishing as the runner-up in the all around. She earned five perfect 10.0 scores that year, and three during the 2023 season before it was cut short. Before that second season, she had announced it would be her last for Auburn because she wanted to return to elite with a goal of competing again in Paris.
But her health began to fail while she was still a gymnast at Auburn. Starting in February of 2023, she began to experience extreme and uncontrollable swelling. By March, her symptoms had worsened, and she was unable to continue competing. But she wasn’t diagnosed properly until April, when she was told she had two separate kidney diseases. She stopped training and moved back home to Minnesota.
“I was just rotting in my bed,” Lee said in the same Sports Illustrated interview. “I couldn’t talk to anybody. I didn’t leave the house.”
Eventually, once she got her conditions (which she has publicly declined to name) under control, she quietly resumed her training and made her official return to elite in August at the 2023 U.S. Classic. She later wrote she was “blessed” and “grateful” in an Instagram post.
“This comeback was so much more than my return to elite gymnastics,” Lee wrote. “It was me proving to myself that I can overcome hard things, and to hopefully inspire others to never let life’s setbacks stop you from going after your dreams.”
Still, making the Olympics — especially as part of the highly competitive five-women U.S. team — would be an uphill battle. She declined a selection camp invitation ahead of the world championships for health reasons and started the 2024 season with a disappointing performance at Winter Cup in February. Competing in her two signature events, she finished in 13th on beam and 26th on uneven bars after falling. Lee was upset but undeterred.
“You can’t get anywhere without failing,” Lee told reporters at the time. “I think I just take that with a grain of salt. Obviously, I’m sad and I’m going to be mad about it for a really long time, but it’s okay.”
And by the time the 2024 U.S. Classic came around in May — the first national event in the lead-up to Olympic trials and the Games — Lee was starting to return to her peak form. She earned first place on beam there, then went on to U.S. championships, finishing fourth place in the all-around and second on beam. A few weeks later, in front of a home crowd in Minneapolis at Olympic trials, Lee notched her ticket to Paris with a second-place all-around finish.
Just stunning from Suni Lee.The defending all-around Olympic gold medalist makes a statement on uneven bars. #ParisOlympics NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/RrGcG5DvV0
Just over a month later, and she has two more Olympic medals.
On Thursday, Lee had entered the final rotation on floor tied for fourth place. While she later jokingly confessed she wasn’t great at doing math calculations in her head, she did know she would have to give everything she had on the event in order to medal.
“I went out there and I just told myself not to put any pressure on myself because I didn’t want to think about the past Olympics or even try to prove anything to anyone,” Lee said. “I wanted to just prove to myself that I could do it because I didn’t think that I could.”
On Friday, Lee told “Today” that she started to tear up as soon as her routine was over because she was so happy with it. Moments later, her 13.666 score was enough to put her to the top of the leaderboard and, with just Biles and eventual silver medalist Rebeca Andrade left, she knew she had guaranteed herself a spot on the podium.
Suni Lee closes her third rotation with a solid showing on balance beam. #ParisOlympics NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/QLY2NaZZP0
For Lee and for Graba, it marked the culmination of hard work, ups and downs, and even self-doubt.
“If you asked any of us, anybody in the room, if this [bronze medal] was possible, even three months ago, we would have all just said, ‘Look, let’s make the team as a [beam and bars] specialist,” Graba said after. “And that’s what everybody else thought too. It’s been dicey the whole way. It’s been a balancing act the whole way. Just keeping her healthy and keeping her mind right and keeping her believing, keeping me believing, keeping just everything going, it’s been hard. I didn’t believe it until her floor routine ended.”
And Lee’s story of perseverance in Paris isn’t finished. She qualified in third place for the bars final and in fourth for the beam final, with a strong chance to medal on both events.
But no matter what happens the rest of the week, she’s already succeeded far beyond their goals.
“I mean, I would’ve been fine with any [result],” Graba said. “And I told her that coming in. I’m like, ‘I’m just happy you’re here.'”