Suni Lee recovered from multiple kidney diseases that left her at rock bottom to stand on the podium beside her US teammate on Friday
At her lowest point Suni Lee wasn’t thinking about going back to the Olympics. Just getting out of bed in the morning was hard enough.
For all of the attention devoted to Simone Biles’ extraordinary comeback over the past week, Lee’s return to the sport’s biggest stage has been even more improbable.
That’s when Lee’s longtime coach, Jess Graba, kept it simple: “Win floor, and you’ll win [a bronze],” he said.
From the moment Lee completed her first tumbling pass, a goosebump inducing full-twisting double layout on which she stuck the landing perfectly, the ear-to-ear smile across her face said everything you needed to know.
After quitting training and moving home to Minnesota, the various treatments for the two incurable kidney diseases led to weight gain and exhaustion.