26 July 2024
St. Paul gymnast Suni Lee pulls up to Midwest Gymnastics in Little Canada shortly after 4 p.m. It’s a hot summer day in early July, and the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are quickly approaching.
She makes casual conversation with a couple of coaches on the mat as the local gym quickly starts to fill in around her. She puts the finishing touches on her warmup when a group of little kids rush in to give her a hug before their practice. She smiles and wraps her arms around them before heading to the balance beam to work on her routine.
The scene doesn’t make sense on the surface. You’ve got Lee working to perfect a tumbling pass under the watchful eye of longtime coaches Jess Graba and Ali Lim, then less than 50 feet away are a handful of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds learning the basics of the sport. The whiplash is jarring for an outsider.
Not to Lee. The chaos inside Midwest Gymnastics has never bothered her. She has been working out there since she was a kid herself and has always found beauty in being able to blend in.
“This is her happy place,” Graba said. “She’s just another kid when she walks in here. She doesn’t have to worry about anything else. It’s like home for her.”
That feeling has been instrumental for Lee over the past few years.
The journey to qualify for another Olympics hasn’t been easy. Not only has she had to figure out how to handle fame at a young age after winning the gold medal in the all-around competition at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, she also has had to navigate an incurable kidney disease that nearly ended her career.
All the while Midwest Gymnastics has served as a safe space where she can go whenever things get overwhelming.
“I think it’s been a saving grace for all of us,” Lim said. “We can come in here and leave the rest of the stuff outside.”
The culmination will come this weekend in Paris for Lee with Olympic qualifications starting at 4:40 a.m. CST Sunday. local time. If things go according to plan, Lee will be competing in the team final and the all-around final next week. Frankly, no matter what happens, Lee can take pride in the fact that she made it back.
“I’ve learned that I’m a lot stronger than I think,” she said. “I’m capable of anything if I put my mind to it.”
How it helped her handle fame
Nothing was the same for Lee after winning the gold medal in 2020.
Everybody wanted a piece of her in the immediate aftermath.
She returned home to St. Paul and was greeted with a parade in her honor. She traversed the country on a media tour that featured countless public appearances as well as a trip to the Met Gala in Manhattan. She competed as a contestant on “Dancing With The Stars” alongside other celebrities.
“There were a lot of things on her plate,” Graba said. “You can’t prepare an 18-year-old for that.”
She handled it with grace every step of the way, and continued to do so once she got to Auburn University. As much as she enjoyed parts of her college experience, there were certain aspects that made it difficult for Lee to settle in and feel completely comfortable.
In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Lee highlighted some of the challenges, like how she had to opt for virtual classes because she couldn’t walk to class without a security detail. She added that her teammates at Auburn weren’t the nicest to her because of her stature.
She started to feel like an outcast. It was a far cry from her experience at Midwest Gymnastics back home where she felt love from everybody around her.
“The way she handled everything was so impressive to watch,” Lim said. “She’s just been so poised through it all.”
How it helped her navigate illness
After announcing on social media that she planned to leave Auburn to focus on qualifying for the Olympics, Lee was diagnosed with an incurable kidney disease that ultimately forced her to move back home sooner than expected. She stopped training completely while doctors tried to get things under control.
Forget the Olympics. She just wanted to be healthy.
“That was scary,” Graba said. “We had no idea what was going on.”
As she slowly started to learn more about it, Lee returned to Midwest Gymnastics, as a way to clear her head more than anything else. It wasn’t about training for the Olympics at that point. It was simply about feeling like herself, even if only for a few moments at a time.
“She can just come here and go about her business,” said Puner Koy, who coached her at Midwest Gymnastics when she was young. “That’s really important because she’s constantly under a microscope with everything else she has going on in her life.”
Eventually, Lee felt herself getting stronger, and she let herself start thinking about the Olympics. She talked to Graba and Lim, and they came up with a plan.
“It was a really hard transition for all of us after I got sick,” Lee said. “Just having to work through all of that, they almost had to relearn how to coach me.”
There were ups and downs as soon as they started training with a purpose. Sometimes she would wake up and her energy levels were so low that she could barely get out of bed. Sometimes she would wake up and her hands would be so swollen she couldn’t grip the uneven bars.
Whenever she was at Midwest Gymnastics, though, Lee was thrilled to be working toward something again.
“I’m so glad that I never gave up,” she said. “There were so many times where I thought about quitting.”
The hard work paid off last month at the Olympic Trials at Target Center in Minneapolis. After completing a ridiculous routine on the uneven bars, Lee had a pretty good idea that she had done enough to make the U.S. team. It became official a couple of hours later, and Lee burst into tears on the mat.
“The further away we get from it, the more we’ll realize how big of a deal it was,” Graba said. “It was relief more than anything in the moment. It was like a weight lifted off our shoulders. Now at least whatever happens it’s going to be happening at the Olympics.”
How it helped her appreciate success
Fittingly, after qualifying for the Olympics, Lee found herself back on the mat at Midwest Gymnastics. Never mind that she had accomplished her goal. There was still work to be done.
“There’s more in the tank,” Lee said. “I’m never going to be satisfied.”
Maybe the coolest part about seeing Lee in her element is observing the way some of the little kids perceive her. As much as she might exists as a celebrity when they watch her compete on television, she exists as a peer whenever they are in the gym together.
“She’s just Suni in their eyes,” said Eric Kangas, who coaches at Midwest Gymnastics. “She just so happens to be an Olympic champion.”
That doesn’t mean there aren’t hilarious moments along the way, like earlier this year when Lee literally had to avoid a little kid while practicing her mount onto the balance beam.
“I was joking with her,” said Tony Maras, who got his start at Midwest Gymnastics, then went on to compete collegiately for Nebraska. “If she can train with a little kid running across the mat, she can go out there and compete at the Olympics, no problem.”
Asked about her goals heading into the Olympics, Lee said she would like to win a team gold medal more than anything else. She added that individually she would like to be competitive in the all-around final and that she also wants a gold medal on balance beam.
You can bet her family at Midwest Gymnastics will be following along every step of the way.
“We are so incredibly proud of her,” Lim said. “I would not want to do this with anybody else.”
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