‘What comes next’
Reigning Olympic all-around champ Lee savors every moment in her comeback from kidney-related illness
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — As Sunisa Lee prepared to clench her chalk-covered hands around the uneven bars, the pop music that blared through speakers at the cavernous convention center hosting Winter Cup podium training abruptly cut out. In the lull between songs, a fellow gymnast shouted encouragement, “C’mon, Suni!” Absent an audible soundtrack, the music might as well have been swelling to a crescendo as Lee landed the new skill she hopes to have named after her, a full twisting layout Jaeger catch-andrelease move, and dismounted with a confident grin.
Everything feels new these days for Lee, the reigning Olympic allaround champion. She will make her 2024 competitive debut at this weekend’s Winter Cup, after she spent the last year recuperating physically and mentally from a kidney-related illness that ended her college career at Auburn and forced her to step away from international gymnastics competition.
Lee will compete only in the balance beam and bars at the Winter Cup. It is just her third elite competition since the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, following last August’s U.S. Classics and U.S. Championships. She competed only in vault and beam at both competitions last year but a month later withdrew from world championships and Pan Am Games selection due to health concerns.
On Friday at podium training, Lee was just happy to be back. She described her illness, which at times caused intense swelling in her limbs and face, as “in remission.”
“It’s a really huge relief,” Lee said. “I was looking back at my one year ago, and I think we were in Kentucky
and that’s when like I had the first flare up and I’m like, ‘Wow, it’s crazy like what can happen in a year.’ Because here I am a year later competing my new skill and it’s just so exciting.”
Lee hopes her performance in Louisville will earn her a spot at next month’s World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan, where she can submit a new element to gymnastics’ code of points. The international competition is also part of a series of Olympic qualification events for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
For now, though, Lee isn’t looking past the Winter Cup to the Olympics or even to national championships this summer. The 20-year-old, who will turn 21 in March, is squarely focused on the short-term goal of getting her new skill named.
“I think that I kind of took a little bit of a step back when I got sick because I got nervous that I wasn’t going to be good enough to make it to the Olympics,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, this is something that I really want.’ So we kind of put our all into it and we started training it every single day and now it’s like one of my biggest goals. So hopefully we can get that done and then I can move on in the next thing. I’m not trying to think about the Olympics and everything afterwards because you never know what can happen. So I’m just kind of worrying about what comes next.”
Lee only resumed training about six weeks ago in early January, coming out of what her coach Jess Graba described as a period of “depression” following her diagnosis last March.
“She’s just tough as nails,” Graba said. “She’s always been tough as nails. She doesn’t complain about anything. You know, she’s been very depressed all year. I think it was more just such a shock and nobody knew what to do with it. You just don’t know how to handle that. You don’t know how to tell somebody how to handle it. I don’t know how to coach her through it. I mean, so basically we’ve been fumbling around a little in the dark and trying to figure it out.”
Lee credited her coaches, Graba and Alison Lim, and her friends with helping her get through those dark times. She said she often needed to simply remind herself of the joy she derived from gymnastics.
“I actually did a lot of rewatching my own videos and seeing how happy I was,” Lee said. “And knowing all the things that I went through at the time and how I got through all of that kind of motivated me to get through that, and also having my coaches and just like friends supporting me always uplifting me because I wasn’t in the greatest mindset. And now I’m like, way better. I’m in happy spirits. I’m like, just so happy to be here.”
The biggest challenge, Graba said, was just getting Lee back in the gym. He encouraged her just to come hang around her teammates and younger gymnasts who look up to her before she even started training. Once she did, they threw everything about their previous training process out the window.
“Nothing we did before is going to work now,” Graba said. “So we’re making it up as we go, but it’s also kind of fun that way. I mean, it’s a challenge.”
Lee’s kidney disease is under control, but it’s not going away. She needs to be consistent about taking her medication at the same times every day and extremely careful about what she eats. At national team camp last month in Katy, Graba purchased an air fryer to prepare food for Lee in his hotel room. In the gym, Lee’s coaches adapt workouts to how she feels on a specific day.
At Friday’s senior women podium training, Lee was the main attraction. Her bright fuchsia leotard stood out, and at the start of the third rotation, a cluster of cameras and reporters migrated to the far end of the gym to watch her on bars.
Lee worked on the full Jaeger element for almost two years before she got comfortable enough to debut it at competition. Although Lee said she felt her beam routine was “a little rough” on Friday and admitted to overthinking her series, she said was excited about her bars routine.
“It’s really fun,” Lee said. “I mean, it’s nerve racking of course, but that’s the reason why I love gymnastics and love competing because I love the nerves. I love putting the pressure on myself and making myself better every day.”
After training, no one knew immediately what difficulty value judges would give Lee’s new element. Graba said he hopes it will score at least an 8.0 out of 10.0.
Chellsie Memmel, the women’s program technical lead and a member of the selection committee, said that USA Gymnastics will send up to two athletes to the Baku World Cup. But Memmel emphasized that specialists will have a harder pathway to selection for that competition, and later on to the Olympic team.
“Absolutely we’re looking at how they’re how they’re doing here,” Memmel said. “If we’re sending someone just to do two events who isn’t currently on the national team, they need to place high, obviously, to show that. I mean, she (Lee) has a shot.”
Graba said that Lee is training every event and aspires to compete allaround later this spring at the U.S. Classic and, if she qualifies, U.S. Championships.
Despite all the difficulties her illness has presented, Lee said she is grateful that she came out stronger on the other side.
“Way, way stronger,” she said.
Graba and his wife Lim have coached Lee at Midwest Gymnastics Center in Minnesota since she was 6. Graba said he wasn’t sure he could have helped Lee get through the last year without the foundation of their longterm relationship. After all they endured together, every time Lee steps on the floor from here on out will be considered a victory, regardless of results.
“The reward was today,” Graba said. “The reward was we come out and I feel good, because today you came here with an objective. And even if you have a couple of hiccups along the way, we adjusted and moved on, if you feel good about it — good, mission accomplished. And that’ll be anything. Doesn’t really matter the result. It’s the process.”