St. Paul gymnast Suni Lee pulls up to Midwest Gymnastics in Little Canada shortly after 4 p.m.
It’s a hot summer day in early July, and the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are quickly approaching. She makes casual conversation with a couple of coaches on the mat as the local gym quickly starts to fill in around her. She puts the finishing touches on her warmup when a group of little kids rush in to give her a hug before their practice.
She smiles and wraps her arms around them before heading to the balance beam to work on her routine. The scene doesn’t make sense on the surface. You’ve got Lee working to perfect a tumbling pass under the watchful eye of longtime coaches Jess Graba and Ali Lim, then less than 50 feet away are a handful of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds learning the basics of the sport.
The whiplash is jarring for an outsider. Not to Lee. The chaos inside Midwest Gymnastics has never bothered her.
She has been working out there since she was a kid herself and has always found beauty in being able to blend in. “This is her happy place,” Graba said. “She’s just another kid when she walks in here.
She doesn’t have to worry about anything else. It’s like home for her.” That feeling has been instrumental for Lee over the past few years.
The journey to qualify for another Olympics hasn’t been easy. Not only has she had to figure out how to handle fame at a young age after winning the gold medal in the all-around competition at the 2020 Summer Olympics in.
