Suni Lee's bronze medal feels golden after challenging path to Paris 2024 podium: "It has taken so much"
Picture by 2024 Getty Images
Just months ago, Suni Lee was struggling to get herself out of bed following a long battle with illness that had pre-maturely ended her collegiate career at Auburn.
Thursday (1 August) she earned the bronze medal in the women's gymnastics individual all-around at the Olympic Games Paris 2024, two days after she had helped the U.S. to the women's team title.
"It has taken so much," Lee told reporters in a packed media room after her bronze-medal effort. "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.
"I went out there and 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 else," she said. "I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it because I didn't think that I could. It has taken a lot."
While Simone Biles' golden comeback has grabbed countless headlines, Lee has charted her own - perhaps even more unlikely - path back to the Olympic podium, making her the first female all-around winner to earn back-to-back individual all-around medals since the great Nadia Comaneci in 1976-80.
Lee was thrust into the unexpected spotlight as Olympic champion at Tokyo 2020 in 2021, when Biles withdrew during the team event and opted out of the individual competition, as well.
It was then that Lee claimed her Olympic title by the throat, but nothing has come easy since, with injuries clouding her college career before an uncommon illness - a rare kidness condition - landed her in a hospital bed.
Having Biles by her side helped, too.
"Having Simone here today definitely helped me a lot; we were both freaking out," a laughing Lee, 21, admitted. "It was so nice to know that I wasn't out there freaking out by myself."
Suni Lee's coach: "She's such a fighter"
The bronze wasn't a given, even as Bercy Arena roared "SUNI! SUNI!" as Lee took to her final appartus of the night, floor routine.
She had faded mentally at the end of her balance beam routine, leaving her behind Italy's Alice D'Amato by just 0.034 points. But Lee left no doubt after her opening pass, a full-twisting double layout which she stuck the landing on and broke into the most beaming of smiles.
It was enough to topple D'Amato in the all-around, 56.465 to 56.333, securing that bronze.
For Jess Graba, Lee's longtime coach, the victory was in arriving in Paris: It has been a rocky road the last 18 months.
*"*Medals are nice, but being here is the biggest thing," Graba told reporters. "What she went through and she is still going through... she's just such a fighter. I always bet on her. I told her that, too: 'I always put my money on you because you always fight.' So that's what it is. And she wanted it. She went out and got it."
The sellout crowd erupted again as Lee's scores flashed up, assuring the medal, and she took the moment in completely, first covering her mouth with her hand and then embracing Graba in a huge.
"I told you!" he yelled in her ear.
"I was like, 'I don't even know how to do math in my head, and Simone says, 'Me neither,'" a giggly Lee told reporters, sat aside Biles in press.
"We were trying to calculate scores but it was not working," added Biles, both women laughing.
"So it was great to be out there with Simone," Lee concluded. "And do it the right way this time."
"I just told her 'thank you' tonight," Graba said of Lee. "You know, just for for bringing us. For all of us being able to go to this together."
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