Who is Suni Lee? What you need to know about the gymnast at the Paris 2024 Olympics

Suni Lee turned heads at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when she made her first Olympic appearance and won the sport’s biggest event, the women’s all-around.

Now the 21-year-old gymnast hopes to do the same at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Lee is competing in her second career Olympics and will travel to Paris, hoping to lead the United States to gold again in the women’s team event. Simone Biles is back after the United States won silver in the team all-around event in Tokyo.

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Here’s what you need to know about Lee ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics: who she is, her height, her battle with kidney disease, and her Olympic history:

Who is Suni Lee?

Lee is a member of the US gymnastics team for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

She is from St. Paul, Minnesota and has been a professional gymnast since 2016, when she was 13 years old. At age 16, Lee’s performance at the 2019 City of Jesolo Trophy competition in Italy helped her earn a spot on the 2019 U.S. team that won gold at the World Championships in the all-around team event. In addition to winning gold at the 2019 World Championships, Lee also won two individual event medals: silver on the floor exercise and bronze on the uneven bars.

Lee committed to Auburn University in 2020 ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. She won SEC Freshman of the Year honors in 2022 at Auburn after earning eight All-America honors and an individual national championship title on the balance beam. Lee’s national championship title was the second in Auburn history, tied with Derrian Gobourne.

The three-time Olympic medalist’s career at the collegiate level was cut short in 2023 when she was sidelined with a medical condition related to her kidneys. Despite her sophomore season being cut short, Lee still won 18 event titles on the year: vault (two), uneven bars (six), balance beam (four), floor exercise (two) and all-around (four).

As noted on her Team USA profile, Lee is the 10th most decorated American gymnast, with a total of six medals at the World Championships and the Olympics, including a gold medal in the Olympics individual all-around.

More: Suni Lee ‘on track’ for Olympics after fourth place at national championships

How tall is Suni Lee?

Lee is listed as 5 feet on Team USA’s website. She is the second-shortest female gymnast on the U.S. team for the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to USA TODAY. (That doesn’t include Hezly Rivera’s height, and Rivera’s height is also not listed on her USA Gymnastics page.)

How old is Suni Lee?

Lee was born on March 9, 2003 and will go to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris at the age of 21.

Suni Lee’s Kidney Disease

In February 2023, Lee announced on social media that she was dealing with a kidney-related illness and that it would end her college career at Auburn as she required medical treatment. After testing, it was discovered that Lee had two rare forms of kidney disease.

At the Team USA Media Summit in New York City in April, Lee said she was in remission. Three months later, she qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“There were so many times where I thought about quitting and just giving up because I was so sick. It was just so hard to stay motivated and see everyone else getting better. I just couldn’t go to the gym anymore and I was constantly doubting myself,” Lee told TODAY’s Hoda Kotba after qualifying for Paris.

“But once I had those people around me lifting me up, supporting me and making sure I was okay, I knew this was what I wanted to do.”

Suni Lee Olympic History, Medals

The Olympic Games were attended by: 2020 Tokyo | 2024 Paris
Gold medals won: A
Silver medals won: A
Bronze medals won: A
Total Olympic medals: Three

Lee made her Olympic debut in 2020 at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. At the Tokyo Summer Games, Lee made history when she became the fifth consecutive American woman, and sixth overall, to win the women’s individual all-around event — an impressive feat for a budding Olympian.

As noted in her Team USA profile, Lee’s victory in the all-around in Tokyo marked the first time that a woman of Asian descent and a Hmong American have won an Olympic all-around title.

Here’s how Lee performed at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics: