Sunisa Lee’s long road to the Olympics ended in a familiar place: the medal stand
PARIS — Not long ago, Sunisa Lee called coach Jess Graba and told him it was over.
The process of trying to navigate two kidney diseases which made the weight of the 2020 Olympic gymnastics champion too heavy. Uncertainty. Frustration. All.
Come to the gym, Graba told him. That’s not a decision you make over the phone.
So they sat down and talked. The urge to retire passed. Lee stayed in the gym and, little by little, very, very slowly, the skills and endurance that made her the best in the world returned.
Outwardly, she didn’t need validation. Inwardly, she did. And on Thursday night, inside Bercy Arena, the proof was around Lee’s neck: a bronze in the general competition which Lee wasn’t sure she deserved until IOC President Thomas Bach pulled it over her head.
“I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it because I didn’t think I could do it,” Lee said.
Sort of. Lee has a certain firmness that betrays the grace of her gymnastics skills. She leaned on it for months as she and Graba hatched a plan that ended with Lee on the medal stand alongside her good friend Simone Biles and Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.
Biles and Andrade were expected. They arrived in Paris after competing at the world championships last fall. Lee didn’t make the cut. She wasn’t ready.
She stood before a crowd that included the United States men’s basketball team and Kendall Jenner. Most of them had come to see Biles. Lee reminded them that when she’s at her best, she can put on a great show herself.
Lee remains a marvel on the uneven bars, where she will seek a medal later in the Games. She will also be in the balance beam final, thanks to a series that combines elegance and athleticism.
Floor exercises can be a challenge at times, though. She entered the final rotation from the podium. Graba made it look pretty easy.
“Win the ground and you will win” (a bronze medal) he told him.
Lee did it, in her own way, by surpassing Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour to become the first reigning Olympic champion to win a medal at the next Games since Nadia Comenci in 1980.
A playground for an athlete who still occasionally wonders how she’ll feel that day. She racked up more good days than bad, edging teammate Jordan Chiles for a spot in the all-around final and then stringing together four routines that were equal to, if not better than, the ones she produced in Tokyo three years ago, when she edged Andrade in a tight final.
“I did everything I could,” Lee said. “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.”
She had too much on her mind. The stands were full, unlike in Tokyo. Her family was there, too. Unlike in Tokyo. And she felt such joy in her pursuit of the sport that she sometimes wondered if she had lost something along the way.
She also had Biles. And they leaned on each other a lot in a finale where they both found themselves in positions they didn’t want to be in before blossoming at the end.
“Having Simone there today was a big help because we were both freaking out,” Lee said. “So it was nice to know I wasn’t alone out there freaking out.”
In the end, there was no need to. Graba often refers to Lee as a “fighter.” That toughness — mental and physical — shines through in a medal that is not the same color as the one she won in Japan, but in some ways no less significant.
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