Bronze is golden for St. Paul’s Suni Lee

Anyone judging Suni Lee strictly on her medal placement in the last two Olympics could make the mistake of thinking that she has regressed.

Lee won the all-around gold in Tokyo three years ago. She won the all-around bronze on Thursday in Paris. In other sports and under different circumstances, hard-hitting analysis of her performance might have questioned why she couldn’t repeat.

Under the circumstances facing Lee, that kind of thinking is silly.

What Lee did to capture bronze, given everything she has faced, was the Minnesota sports equivalent of Kirby Puckett’s Game 6 home run or Jack Morris’ Game 7 complete game.

Needing a stellar score on her floor exercise to launch herself onto the podium, she performed brilliantly and beautifully. When she catapulted herself through her first tumbling run and stuck the landing, her smile told the story.

She had recovered, persevered and triumphed, becoming the first woman since 1980 to follow an all-around gold with a medal in the subsequent Olympics. The last to do it? The great Nadia Comaneci.

Lee’s gold in Tokyo was the story of the Olympics, especially if you live in a certain Midwestern state. She won there in part because her U.S. teammate Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast ever, withdrew from the event because of the infamous “twisties,” a mental block that keeps gymnasts from safely competing.

After winning gold, Lee spent too much of the following three years dealing with kidney problems that caused her to gain 45 pounds, while also dealing with the difficult transformation from relatively anonymous gymnast to international superstar.

Just a few weeks ago, her St. Paul-based coach, Jess Graba, detailed Lee’s long and difficult path. Before the U.S. Olympic trials at Target Center, Lee turned down most interview requests. Dealing with her handlers, I got the sense that Lee wasn’t fully confident in her ability to compete at a high level.

She did make the U.S. team in a triumphant return home, then made history in Paris.

Anyone disappointed that she didn’t win another gold is misunderstanding the difficulty of that task under any circumstances, and the impossibility of that task when Biles is physically and mentally healthy.

Biles performs skills at such a high degree of difficulty that if she performs anywhere close to her normal standards, she will win gold. And that’s what happened.

Lee, like most mortal gymnasts, has to fret about the minute bobbles and wobbles that can lead to a .1 point deduction and make all the difference in the standings.

Entering the floor exercise on Thursday, Lee needed a 13.535 to pass Italy’s Alice D’Amato and Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour for bronze.

Doable? Of course. Difficult? Absolutely. Difficult given the pressure she faced and the challenges she had faced the last two years? Unimaginable for a 21-year-old who grew up and learned gymnastics in St. Paul.

She turned in a 13.666 and hugged Graba. With Biles sitting and staring while waiting for her turn, Lee went back to Graba for another hug.

When Biles did enough with her floor routine to win the gold, Biles and Lee grabbed an American flag and danced around the mat.

In these Olympics, Lee helped the U.S. win a team gold medal, then won an all-around bronze. She has two more medal chances in the uneven bars and balance beam.

She has already done enough to bolster her status as an international superstar. Think that’s hyperbole? Consider that NBC’s live broadcast of the women’s gymnastics team final averaged 12.7 million viewers across its platforms, making it one of the top weekday daytime events in terms of viewership in Olympic history.

More people watched Biles and Lee on Thursday than any single game of the 2024 NBA Finals or the first round of the 2024 NFL draft.

So when you think of Lee, don’t think of regression, and don’t think of her as a nice little local Olympic story. Lee is a champion, an international superstar and one of the best sports stories in the history of our state. Once again, she stuck the landing.