Sunisa Lee, the all-around women’s champion at the Tokyo Olympics, overcame personal strife, family expectations and serious illness to get to Paris.
Sunisa Lee woke up one morning last year and was startled by her reflection in the mirror.
Her face looked as if it had been inflated with an air pump. Her leg joints were so swollen that she could hardly bend her knees or ankles. A scale revealed she had gained more than 10 pounds (4.5kg).
Her mind raced: had she been eating too much? Was it the pollen in the air? Maybe she was allergic to her roommate’s new dog?
“I was like, who is this person looking back at me?” Lee, who is competing for the United States at the Paris Games, said in an interview. “It was so scary. I didn’t know it then, but the old Suni was gone. And she would never be back.”
Lee had been a surprise winner in Tokyo: Simone Biles — the overwhelming favourite — had withdrawn from the Games with a mental block that made her feel unsafe performing her flips and twists in the air.
The title of gold medalist came with a level of celebrity that Lee, who was a quiet 18-year-old from a conservative Hmong community in Minnesota, was not prepared for — and didn’t want.
She has had stalkers, including one who her coaches say tried to track her down in at least three states. At Auburn University, where she was on the gymnastics team for two years, the attention she received was so smothering that she resorted to taking online classes from her bedroom so she could avoid the campus.
Instead of revelling in her celebrity, Lee, now 21, said she was depressed and lonely.
But the reason her body was swollen that morning last year was the most frightening turn of all. Doctors initially told her that she’d never do gymnastics again.
“For so many different reasons since Tokyo, I had to really grow up, and fast,” she said.
After the Tokyo Games, Lee left her hometown, St Paul, Minnesota, against her parents’ wishes and headed to college at Auburn and a host of other opportunities, including TV shows.
Her parents, Yeev Thoj and John Lee, had other plans for her after the Olympics.
John Lee said in an interview that he wanted Suni to “do some work, stay in Minnesota and go to school”. He said he is used to Hmong girls staying with their parents until they are married, not setting out on far-off adventures.
She had barely settled in at Auburn before heading off to Los Angeles for a few months to compete on Dancing With the Stars. It was the first time she had lived on her own, and the refrigerator in her apartment reflected that, said her longtime coach, Jess Graba.
Inside were Uber Eats deliveries with forks still in the containers and days-old unopened packages that had sat on Lee’s doorstep for hours because she had unexpectedly been called to dance practice.
Graba would fly to Los Angeles from St Paul every few weeks to check on Lee, making sure she kept up with her online classes at Auburn. He and his wife and fellow coach, Alison Lim, have known Lee since she was 6. When Jess Graba saw the uncovered food in Lee’s fridge, he told her, “Um, botulism much? Suni, you can’t eat like this.”
And when she said the clothes dryer wasn’t working, he investigated and found inch-thick lint in the trap. His twin brother, Jeff Graba, the head gymnastics coach at Auburn, would visit too, and the two of them would deep clean the apartment.
When she returned to Auburn, Lee became the first female all-around Olympic champion to compete in college gymnastics. She brought unusual fanfare to the programme.
In her dorm room, Lee found notes admirers had slipped under her door and heard knocks at all hours from fellow students asking her for her photo. In cafeterias, she saw students taking photos and videos of her while she ate. People would stare as she crossed campus and call out her name.
Most troubling, a Hmong man in his 40s or 50s had followed her from Minnesota, her coaches said. He had showed up at Midwest Gymnastics in Little Canada, Minnesota, Jess Graba’s gym, looking for Lee.
All Lee wanted to do was stay in her room, where she felt safe, she said.
She added, “I had to learn to be alone.”
In November 2022, Lee announced that she was leaving Auburn after the spring season to train for the Paris Olympics.
Her last meet was in Georgia, where security had to sweep the hotel, looking for two men who were stalking her, Jeff Graba said. And in the days after that meet, her ankles became swollen. Days later, she woke up swollen all over.
Doctors thought it could be an allergic reaction, but after numerous tests and countless questions, the culprit was clear: Lee’s kidneys weren’t working properly.
She moved home to Minnesota, living in her own apartment. Many days and nights, she languished in bed.
A biopsy revealed that she was dealing with two kidney diseases, the names of which she doesn’t want to reveal. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic tried different drug combinations to control her symptoms. Changes in that regimen often came with side effects, including weight gain and exhaustion.
“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 said.
Lee was on bed rest for weeks, took off five months and gained 45 pounds on her 5-foot frame before returning to the gym.
The steroid Lee was taking weakened her ligaments and tendons. The hardest part, Graba said, was that her brain was sure she could still perform her usual high-level gymnastics, but her body wasn’t ready.
Lee came back for two important national meets in 2023, and won medals at both, but not without challenges. She was on a strict low-sodium diet. Lee declined an invitation to the selection camp for the world championships. She needed more time.
On January 4, 2024, Lee’s doctor called to say that her medications were working well and she wouldn’t have to go in for infusions as often. Those treatments had exhausted her and often set her back at least a week, her coaches said. Now she could focus on training for the Paris Olympics.
Her health problems made it difficult to train the way she had, and Lee was frustrated and emotionally spent. She had to learn a more deliberate way of training.
“Whenever I’m talking to my coaches, I’m always like, I get really sad because I’m never going to be the same, like the same Suni, not the same athlete,” she said. “And they’re like, good.”
She explained that Graba and Lim tell her that she is a tougher, more resilient athlete now because of what she has endured.
Sometimes, she has needed to be convinced of that. During the vault competition at last month’s US nationals, Lee landed on her rear end and left the floor to have what she later called “a breakdown”.
“In my head, I was already like, OK, I’m done, this is it,” she said.
But Biles showed up to give her a pep talk, and it worked.
Lee’s kidney diseases are now in remission. At the US Olympic trials last month, she finished fourth in the all-around to secure her spot on her second Olympic team. Her parents watched her from high up in a suite.
Speaking to the crowd through a microphone with her Olympic teammates at her side, she said, “A year ago, I didn’t even think this was possible,” struggling to get out that last word before she doubled over in tears.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Juliet Macur
Photographs by: Jenn Ackerman, Gabriela Bhaskar and Chang W. Lee
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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