Suni Lee on Paris Trials mindset: "I just have to go out there and do my normal."
Reigning Olympic gymnastics all-around champion Suni Lee is taking nothing for granted in her second Olympic run.
As the 16 women who will compete at this week’s U.S. Olympic Team Trials for gymnastics in Lee’s hometown of Minneapolis waited to be announced to the crowd on hand at the conclusion of the U.S. Championships earlier this month, the 21-year-old wasn’t sure if she had qualified.
“I was constantly asking like, ‘Oh my gosh, did I make Trials? Did I make Trials?’ And everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, duh, you got the red [national team] jacket!’” Lee recalled minutes after the announcement. “I’m just trying to keep my composure, and now I know I just have to go back to the gym and work on my consistency, get my bar routine with full difficulty a and keep staying consistent on beam.
“I feel like I don’t need to do anything more,” she concluded.
Despite being in her backyard for the Trials, Lee has had, perhaps, the most difficult journey there of any of her competitors.
In March 2023, Lee found herself suddenly sick, dealing with an unknown condition that was causing her to retain as much as 40 pounds of water. Later diagnosed as two kidney-related conditions, the 21-year-old’s dreams of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 seemed in peril.
Doctors told Lee she might never do gymnastics again, and she struggled with motivation as her health continued to frustrate her.
“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,” Lee told Olympics.com earlier this year.
New year brings a turn around
But she persisted, and at the turn of the year, things started to look up. Her condition became more manageable, and she says now she’s in remission.
Though Lee got back into the gym consistently, it has been far from smooth sailing.
“Whenever I'm talking to my coaches, I get really sad because I'm never going to be the same. I'm not the same Suni, I’m not the same athlete,” Lee told reporters at April’s Team USA media summit in New York City. “And they're like, `Good. You don't want to be. You're doing everything and more right now, and you should be proud of the way that you've been able to come back from everything because you never thought that you would be in this position.’
“And I was like, `You're so right!’ But it's just hard mentally because I was in a really good spot last Olympics getting ready. So now it's just kind of hard switching that mental aspect of it.”
Despite her doubts, Lee has shown steady progress since late April when she won the balance beam competition at the American Classic in Houston, Texas.
Two weeks later, she once again grabbed the balance beam title at the U.S. Classic, holding off fellow Olympic all-around gold medallist Simone Biles.
Lee competed in three events – everything but her speciality, the uneven bars – at the U.S. Classic, leaving her first all-around competition since March last year for late May’s U.S. Championships in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Her first all-around competition in elite gymnastics since the Tokyo Games was not without a bump or two, most notably a flukey fall on vault the second night of competition.
But Lee was overjoyed with her fourth-place finish, just .150 back of the all-around podium.
“It gives me a lot of confidence,” she said afterwards. “I just have to go out there and do my normal.”
Slowly, but surely
Lee’s gradual return to the sport has been part of long-time coach Jess Graba’s plan for his pupil, as the duo have had to learn to adapt to the unexpected.
“This is a challenge because we are used to dealing with ankle injuries or knee injuries or shoulder injuries, but we’re not used to dealing with, ‘I’ve been out for six months and now, I’m back',” he explained at the U.S. championships. “Right now, we’re going every day as it goes.”
The last piece of the puzzle, according to Graba, has been building Lee’s stamina – and getting her to trust in it.
“The stamina is getting better. Her belief in the stamina isn’t quite there yet,” he said. “She can pretty much do everything, but that doesn’t mean [her] mind knows it.”
Lee said she would use the three weeks between nationals and the trials to finalise her routines, including a more difficult opening sequence on the uneven bars.
“I feel like a couple more weeks under my belt, and I’ll be right where I want to be,” she said.
With just over a week to go, Lee posted a video of her performing a sequence that could add nearly a point in difficulty to her uneven bars set (a Nabieva, Bhardwaj, Van Leeuwen sequence).
It could be a crucial part in achieving her dream of a second Games - one she's never given up on despite so many bumps along the road.
“I’m my hardest critic,” admitted Lee. “But I think I’m definitely on the right track.”