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. After a year and a half of uncertainty and depression while battling a pair of career-threatening kidney ailments that led to a weight gain of 45lb on her 5ft frame and kept her out of the gym for months at a time, the Tokyo Olympic all-around champion was ready to call it quits.
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. On Thursday night, the 21-year-old from Minnesota won the bronze behind Biles’ gold and Rebeca Andrade’s silver in the one of the finest gymnastics meets ever staged, becoming the first Olympic all-around champion to win a medal at the next Summer Games since Nadia Comaneci in 1980.
