Jim Souhan: Suni Lee's meandering path from gold brings her home

When a professional football player stars in the Super Bowl, he's immediately feted.

There is copious confetti. Family members gather on the field. Much of the crowd remains during the trophy presentation. One star gets to say, "I'm going to Disney World!"

When St. Paul's Suni Lee won the women's all-around gold medal in gymnastics at the Tokyo Olympics, her immediate rewards were a drug test, hours of waiting and, eventually, cold pizza.

There were few people other than competitors, Olympic officials and journalists in the Ariake Gymnastics Center during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 because of COVID restrictions. When Lee stuck a landing, only her teammates cheered, their shouts ringing tinnily through the arena.

Between events, she stood to the side, pantomiming her routines, preparing as if no one was watching, which in this case was strangely close to the truth.

Lee, an 18-year-old daughter of Hmong immigrants who settled in St. Paul, would win the all-around gold, making her one of the best of all Minnesota sports stories.

And then … it was over, and Lee had to find a way to stick a real-life dismount.

She went through the new-sports-celebrity car wash of TV appearances and unique invitations. She attended Auburn University, where she worked under coach Jeff Graba, a United States team assistant and brother of her longtime coach in St. Paul, Jess Graba, and became a strange campus phenomenon — an incoming freshman who is also a worldwide celebrity.

In recent months, she revealed to Self magazine, she has experienced swelling in her ankles, gained "about 40 pounds" and was diagnosed with incurable kidney disease, which caused her to pause her training for six months.

"She wins in Tokyo, and it's this great moment," Graba said. "Then the first year or two there was a lot of, I suppose, unexpected celebrity.

...continued

swipe to next page