Anúncios
Sunisa Lee, the Tokyo Olympics all-around champion, overcame familial pressures, personal issues, and illness to reach Paris.
Juliet Macur covers her 13th Olympics in Paris. She reported this from Paris, Fort Worth, Minneapolis, and St. Paul.
The Tokyo Olympics’ all-around gymnastics gold medalist Sunisa Lee was astonished by her reflection in the mirror one morning last year.
Anúncios
Her face appeared air-pumped. The swelling in her legs prevented her from bending her knees or ankles. A scale showed she gained over 10 pounds.
She wondered if she was overeating. Was it air pollen? Maybe she was allergic to her roommate’s new dog?
Anúncios
“Who is this person looking back at me?” Lee, a US Paris Games competitor, stated in an interview. “It was terrifying. I didn’t realize the old Suni was gone. She would never return.”
Lee was a surprise winner in Tokyo when Simone Biles, the gold medal favorite, withdrew due to a mental block that made her feel insecure doing her flips and twists.
Lee, a modest 18-year-old from a conservative Hmong community in Minnesota, was unprepared for and didn’t want the celebrity of gold medalist.
The coach says her stalker tried to find her in at least three states. She took online school from her bedroom to avoid Auburn University, where she performed gymnastics for two years, because the attention was so much.
Lee, 21, said she felt depressed and lonely and wept herself to sleep. She missed her usual life and believed she didn’t deserve the Olympic gold medal, as online haters keep telling her.
“In my head, I don’t think I should have won, so when you see it from other people and that many people are saying the same thing over and over and that I just suck and all that stuff, it’s very hard mentally,” she added.
The most terrifying part was why her body was swelled that morning last year. Doctors initially said she’d never try gymnastics again.
“For so many reasons since Tokyo, I had to really grow up, and fast,” she remarked.
Leaving Home
Lee left St. Paul, Minn., against her parents’ wishes to attend Auburn University and work on TV shows on both coasts and red carpet events like the Met Gala after the Tokyo Games.
After the Olympics, her parents, Yeev Thoj and John Lee, Hmong refugees from Laos who fled the Vietnam War, had other intentions.
In an interview, John Lee stated Suni should “do some work, stay in Minnesota and go to school.” He stated Hmong girls usually stay with their parents till marriage, not travel.
Decaf Coffee: Bad for You?
“In the Hmong community, we’d rather they stay home with us so we can kind of monitor them,” said Thoj, who has three children at home. “This generation is different than ours.”
Despite her inexperience outside of the gym, Suni Lee felt a great urge to start her own life, adding, “I just have to do this for myself this time.”
She hardly settled into Auburn before flying to Los Angeles for a few months to compete on “Dancing with the Stars,” finishing fifth. According to her longtime instructor, Jess Graba, her two-bedroom apartment’s refrigerator symbolized her first time living alone.
Lee found Uber Eats deliveries with forks still in the containers and days-old unopened goods that had lingered on her porch for hours when she was unexpectedly called to dance practice.
Graba flew from St. Paul to Los Angeles every couple weeks to be sure Lee kept up with her Auburn online classes. He and his wife and colleague coach, Alison Lim (Ali), have known Lee since she was 6 and consider her family. When Jess Graba noticed Lee’s exposed food in the fridge, he said, “Botulism, much?” Suni, stop eating like this.”
She complained about the dryer not working, and he noticed inch-thick lint in the trap. In addition, his twin brother, Auburn head gymnastics coach Jeff Graba, would visit and deep clean the apartment.
“Nothing was conducive for a young, young kid to be in Hollywood alone and be happy and thrive there,” Jess Graba said.
Lee felt like she was barely surviving this strange new life. In those months, a passing automobile shouted racial comments and sprayed pepper spray as she was out with Asian companions. Lee’s arm got hit.
She sometimes called Graba before a dance to claim she had to puke and couldn’t go onstage.
“Just stop the dance and throw up in a trash can,” Graba said on speaker phone while she put on makeup. “Now that would be good TV.”
He always made her chuckle.
“If I didn’t have Jess and Ali, I’d die,” Lee stated.
Back to School
Once back at Auburn, Lee became the first female all-around Olympic champion in college gymnastics. She gave the program unusual fanfare.
It was called “the Suni effect” as fans filled the arenas to witness her score perfect 10s, finish second in the all-around at the N.C.A.A. championship, and help the Tigers win meets and climb the rankings.
Jeff Graba said the team was mobbed on and off its bus, delaying departure for hours. He termed it “the Auburn gymnastics circus.”
He stated, “Everything was coming at her at 100 miles an hour and I think she handled it better than most 18-year-olds handle normal issues.” “But hers were not normal issues.”
Lee found letters from admirers beneath her door and heard knocks at all hours from classmates asking for her photo in her dorm room. Student photographers and videographers watched her eat in cafeterias. As she crossed college, people called her name and stared.
Her coaches reported a 40- or 50-year-old Hmong man followed her from Minnesota, which was most concerning. In search of Lee, he visited Midwest Gymnastics in Little Canada, Minn., owned by Jess Graba.
“That man was causing real problems,” Graba stated.
Jeff Graba claimed the university hired a security officer to accompany Lee in public, the same as Auburn’s Cam Newton.
She stated she only wanted to stay in her room, where she felt safe.
“I couldn’t trust anybody because they always wanted things from me, like, ‘Hey, can you do this for me?’” she stated. “I just felt like I couldn’t talk to anybody about anything.”
She said, “I had to learn to be alone.”
Health Relapse
Lee stated she would leave Auburn following spring to train for the Paris Olympics in November 2022.
Jeff Graba said security searched the Georgia hotel for two stalkers after her final meeting. Days following that meeting, her ankles swelled. They initially assumed she fell short on a tumbling pass. However, she woke up swollen days later.
A series of tests and questions revealed Lee’s kidney failure, which doctors initially suspected was an allergic reaction. She reported to doctors that she had rarely urinated for two weeks.
Lee was surprised to learn their family had kidney difficulties. Thoj said her sibling died of kidney disease at 45 and her mother at “a little bit over 60”.
Lee halted preparing for Paris and canceled her promotions, worrying that “I need to provide for myself and my siblings.” She saved for those siblings’ tuition and was frugal with what was left.
Home in Minnesota, she got an Australian Shepherd puppy named Bean and lived in her own apartment. She spent several days and nights in bed with him, shedding tears on his fur.
After a biopsy, she was diagnosed with two kidney ailments she won’t disclose. To treat her problems, Mayo Clinic doctors 80 miles away attempted numerous medicine combinations. Adjustments to that regimen often caused weight gain and weariness.
“It wasn’t something like I can just take a pill and be better; I was going to have to deal with this my whole life,” she added, describing her daily medication.
Lee rested for weeks, took five months off, and gained 45 pounds on her five-foot frame before returning to the gym. She had to buy large or extra-large clothes, and sometimes her enlarged hands couldn’t fit into uneven bar grips. Her puffy, weak hands sometimes made her fly off the bars. Her center of gravity was off due to water retention, disturbing her balance, flips, and twists.
Lee’s steroid affected her ligaments and tendons, so Graba had to limit her activity. He said the worst part was that her brain knew she could still do high-level gymnastics but her body wasn’t ready.
Lee returned to two big national meets in 2023 and won medals, but not without difficulty. Graba bought an air fryer in each place to cook her chicken properly on a low-sodium diet. Lee declined a world championship selection camp invitation. She required more time.
“I was just so afraid because I already announced that I was coming back for the Olympics, and I was like, well, I can’t pull out now,” Lee said. But I had to change my mind. Why am I doing it for others? Maybe I’m doing that for the wrong reasons.”
An Important Call
Lee said she would never forget Jan. 4, 2024, when her doctor called to tell her drugs were working well and she wouldn’t need as many infusions. Her instructors stated those sessions drained her and set her behind a week. Now she could focus on Paris Olympics preparation, less than seven months away.
Midwest Gymnastics became her refuge when she returned full-time. Little boys and girls learned cartwheels alongside expert gymnasts prepping for meets. She was famous but not treated like a star. No one requested her autograph or photo there.
“I didn’t have to be the perfect Suni that everyone was staring at; I could just go there and be plain old Suni again,” she added. “Wow, that was relief.”
Lee was disappointed and emotionally exhausted since her health issues prevented her from training as well. Her days of endless repetitions to perfect her skills and routines were over. She had to develop a more methodical training method and trust it to work.
“Whenever I talk to my coaches, I get really sad because I’m never going to be the same, like the same Suni, not the same athlete,” she added. “And they’re good.”
Graba and Lim say her experiences have made her a harder, more resilient athlete.
Sometimes she needs convincing. After landing on her rear end during the vault competition at last month’s U.S. championships, Lee left the floor and had “a breakdown.”
“In my head, I was already like, OK, I’m done, this is it,” she added, confident that her poor performance would affect her subsequent events and terminate her elite career.
Biles appeared to motivate her, and it worked
“She was, like, ‘I’m not OK,’” Biles recounted after the meeting. She stated she advised Lee to keep going for herself and Lee’s ambitions. She told her she can accomplish hard things.
“I just know that she needed some encouragement and somebody to trust her gymnastics for her and believe in her,” Biles added.
Lee, known for the uneven bars, urged Biles to stand next to them throughout her performance, which she did, yelling out encouragement. Lee claimed the reassurance got her through the meet and beyond.
Lee has remission from kidney illness. Under six months after returning to training, she came second in the all-around at the U.S. Olympic trials last month to secure her second Olympic spot. Her parents saw her from a suite above.
In front of the crowd with her Olympic teammates, she stated, “A year ago, I didn’t even think this was possible,” straining to finish before crying.
