Gymnastics’ newly-crowned queen Sunisa Lee has paid touching tribute to her paralyzed father John, praising him for ‘sacrificing everything’ to support her dream of Olympic gold – after admitting that she nearly quit the sport altogether following the devastating accident that left him in a wheelchair.
The 18-year-old’s father was paralyzed from the waist down after sustaining a horrific injury to his spinal cord in 2019, when he fell from a ladder while trimming tree branches – days before Lee, from Minnesota, was due to compete in her first senior national championships.
She went on to compete and finished in second place behind Simone Biles, 24, however she confessed in the wake of her Olympics all-around win that the stress of her father’s accident, coupled with her own injury struggles, left her unsure of her future in the sport. ‘The past two years have been absolutely crazy with COVID and my family and everything else,’ Lee – who also lost an aunt and uncle to COVID-19, shared during a press conference.
‘This medal definitely means a lot to me because there was a point in time where I wanted to quit and I just didn’t think I would ever get here, [especially with my own] injuries and stuff.’ Lee stormed to victory in an incredibly-close final, which was blown wide open by Biles’ decision to withdraw – giving other top contenders like her a much more realistic shot at the gold medal.
Having qualified for the event in third place, behind Biles and Brazilian athlete Rebeca Andrade, the teenager put on an incredibly confident and skillful performance throughout the final to overtake her closest rival and clinch the win.
But while she appeared cool and calm on the surface, Lee confessed that she was actually battling horrific nerves that left her feeling as though she was going to ‘puke’ before she stepped up onto her third event, the balance beam – which is where she surged ahead into first place.
‘In that moment, I literally felt like I was going to puke, I was so nervous,’ she told the Today show’s Hoda Kotb, revealing that she kept telling herself over and over to do ‘nothing more, nothing less’. ‘Nothing more, nothing less… because my normal is good enough, so I don’t need to do anything more, nothing less,’ she explained.
Moments after her win was announced around the arena, a tearful Lee said she FaceTimed her family and friends – who were busy celebrating her success at home in Minnesota. ‘It was right before the medal ceremony,’ she said. ‘I FaceTimed my sister and everyone was screaming and crying. We had a little moment, like I did it… we did it.’
Lee also admitted that her achievements in Japan have been slightly bittersweet because her family and friends were not allowed to travel and support her as they had always planned to do – particularly dad John, who had always joked about doing a backflip to celebrate her first Olympic medal.
