For Suni Lee, a short conversation with fellow Olympic all-around gold medalist Simone Biles helped her through a difficult moment at the Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships on Sunday night.
On her opening vault, Lee performed one and a half twists rather than her planned two twists and sat down her landing.
“I think I just overran it,” Lee said of the lead up to the vault. “I kind of got too far back on the board, and then I got back on the table. I tried to do a double, but I didn’t know where I was, but I knew exactly where I was, if that makes sense. So I just put it to my butt. It’s OK.”
After the vault, she went into a tunnel next to the competition floor to collect herself mentally. Then Biles found her.
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“She knew that I needed help in the moment,” Lee said. “She out of anyone understands, basically, what I did on vault. So she just came over to see if I was OK and basically just helped boost me up and get my confidence back up because, at that point, I was kind of thinking that this was over. So it was really nice to have her in my corner.”
Lee said that Biles told her to breathe, do what she normally does, remember her key words and that she can do hard things.
When Biles had the twisties at the Tokyo Olympics, she got lost in the air on her vault in the team final and performed a full twist less than planned, then withdrew out of safety concerns.
“I knew exactly what was going through (Lee’s) head,” Biles said Sunday. “I dealt with that in Tokyo. So I just knew that she needed some encouragement and somebody to trust her gymnastics for her and to believe in her.”
On the next rotation, Biles stayed nearby as Lee performed on the uneven bars.
Lee hit her routine, tying for the highest score of the night on the apparatus.
Biles congratulated her, then scurried over to prepare for her floor exercise routine.
“I don’t think I could have done it without her,” Lee said.
Lee ultimately finished a satisfying fourth in the two-day all-around, her first time competing on all four events at one meet since being diagnosed with two kidney diseases in early 2023. She has been in remission since late last year.
Lee and Biles next compete at the Olympic Trials from June 27-30 in Lee’s home state of Minnesota. The five-woman Olympic team will be named after trials.