Women's Gold Medalist Named to U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team: Suni Lee Is Headed to Paris

Reigning U.S. Olympic champion Sunisa ‘Suni’ Lee has made the 2024 U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team

The 21-year-old St. Paul native came in second in the trials that ended Sunday, June 30, at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

While Lee had struggles on the vault and beam, she posted the highest score of the enter event on bars, which has long been her signature and also won her a bronze medal at the Tokyo Games in 2021.

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Lee competed against more than a dozen other athletes, including four-time Olympic champion Simone Biles, for one of five coveted spots on Team USA’s artistic gymnastics squad.

The selection committee for Team USA takes into consideration both the athletes’ performances in the trials and their past experience when making selections for the Olympic team.

In her debut at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which was delayed to August 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lee was the first Asian-American woman to win a gold medal in the gymnastics all-around event.

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Lee is also the first Hmong-American Olympian and has won a total of six combined Olympic and world championship medals since 2019.

She has faced struggles outside of the gym, however, including being diagnosed with kidney disease and speaking openly about how hard it was to adjust to life as a college student.

Outside of her gymnastics career, she appeared as a contestant on season 30 of Dancing with the Stars, which she told PEOPLE was more challenging than the Olympics.

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With dance partner Sasha Farber, who also competed with Team USA gymnasts Biles and Mary Lou Retton, Lee finished in fifth place.

“I don’t think anything will ever compare to the work I put into the Olympics,” she told PEOPLE in 2021. “But I have to say, Dancing with the Stars was harder.”

To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, visit TeamUSA.com and come to people.com to check out ongoing coverage before, during and after the games. Watch the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, beginning July 26, on NBC and Peacock.

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