Gymnastics News Weekly - Auburn head coach: Suni Lee plans on coming back

Tokyo 2020 women’s gymnastics all-around gold medallist Suni Lee's "intention is to come back" to continue training and competing at Auburn University for the 2022-23 school year, according to head coach Jeff Graba and a report from the Montgomery Advertiser.

"It really centered around — first off, she doesn’t have to make a decision," said Garba of his conversation with Lee about her future at Auburn. "That’s 2024. She has to make a decision whether she trains for 2024 or not. And that’s been her decision. She wants to train. She doesn’t want to get caught off guard. And she doesn’t want to commit herself, because she’s pretty dang busy right now. So she’s enrolled in classes here. Her intention is to come back.”

Previously, there had been speculation that Lee may return to Minnesota to train for Paris 2024 with Jess Graba, Jeff’s twin brother, who helped guide her to gold, silver and bronze for Team USA at the Games in Tokyo in 2021.

Lee is coming off an historic freshman season that concluded with her team’s best finish at the NCAAs in decades. Individually, Lee was the all-around runner-up and balance beam champion.

Simone headed to Snapchat

Seven-time Olympic medallist Simone Biles, who won four golds at the Rio 2016 Games, is taking on a new venture: Snapchat series star.

Biles, 25, will star in ‘Daring Simone Biles,’ a 10-episode show on the social media platform, where she will be “taking all-new risks trying things she's never done before, from beekeeping to DJ-ing, to prove she is as fearless off the mat as she is on,” according to a press release from Snapchat.

The five-time world all-around champion has won a total of 32 World and Olympic medals, the second most ever by a gymnast, has yet to announce her intentions regarding competitive gymnastics but hasn’t ruled out Paris 2024.

“In the back of my head, it's like, ‘Yeah, I'm going to do it’ but then my body and everything else tells me no,” Biles told Olympics.com in September. “I have to gauge it. I'm not sure yet.”

From the vault...

This week, we're going back to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and the women's floor exercise final. The last medal round of women's gymnastics at these Games, Ukraine's Lilia Podkopayeva won her second gold medal and third overall in the final, holding off Romania's Simona Amanar and American Dominique Dawes. The three women were separated by 0.50.