CrimsonNBlue wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 1:24 pmSuni Lee has star potential, so maybe the silver lining is this opens up the door for her.
Catching up on the news, awesome.
She's easy to root for:
Lee is the first Hmong American to compete in the Olympics and is now the women's gymnastics all-around champion.
. . .
She's been marred by injuries, lost an aunt and uncle to Covid-19 and grappled with a horrific accident that left her father paralyzed.
In 2019, her father John was helping a neighbor trim a tree when he fell and became paralyzed from the waist down.
. . .
The father of six had supported Lee's gymnastics from the beginning -- helping her perform tricks around the house, sometimes to the frustration of her mother.
"I was always jumping on the bed or having my dad spot me while I was doing backflips and stuff like that," Lee told TwinCities.com. "Finally, my mom got tired of it" -- and that's when she enrolled in gymnastics.
But the family had limited means, so John Lee built a balance beam in the backyard for Suni to practice on, the father told NBC.
Just days after her father's devastating accident, Suni Lee made her senior debut at the US gymnastics championships -- competing in honor of her father.
At age 16, she defied expectations -- capturing the gold medal on uneven bars, the bronze on the floor exercise, and the silver in the all-around -- just behind Biles.
Now, at age 18, Lee joins an elite list of American Olympic all-around champions: Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin, Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/sport/gy ... index.html
