Suni Lee Wins All-Around Gold at Tokyo Olympics
The 18-year-old is the U.S.A.’s new gymnastics champion.
Suni Lee won gold in the Tokyo Olympics women’s individual all-around gymnastics final on Thursday. For her best event, the uneven bars, Lee performed one of the most difficult routines in the world, clinching her a score of 15.4, the highest of the night.
Lee’s win comes just two days after Simone Biles dropped out of the U.S. gymnastics team and individual finals to focus on her mental health. Biles’s exit cleared the way for Lee to step up and sweep gold.
Lee, an 18-year-old Hmong American, considered skipping the U.S. National Gymnastics Championships in 2019 after her father, John, suffered an accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. However, the elder Lee pushed her to continue competing, eventually leading the athlete to snag a spot on Team U.S.A. after an impressive run at the gymnastics qualifying trials in June.
“It doesn’t even feel like I’m in real life,” Lee told The New York Times in reaction to her win. The gymnast took to Twitter to express her excitement, captioning a video of her cheering family with, “the people I do it all for.”
