Sweet success after pain and pressure

TOKYO • For years, Sunisa Lee, a teenager from Minnesota who became the Olympic all-around gymnastics champion on Thursday, was not training just for herself.

The Hmong-American went to the gym every day for all the first-generation Americans who wanted to achieve success when their parents had come to the United States with nothing.

And she trained through gruelling practices and painful injuries for her father, John, who in 2019 was paralysed from the chest down after a fall from a ladder.

So one of the first things she did after putting her gold medal around her neck and hearing the United States national anthem played for her Olympic victory was to call her family and cry with them in joy at a dream fulfilled.

"We were all just crying on the phone. It was a very surreal moment and I'm super happy," said the 18-year-old, the youngest member of the US women's gymnastics team.

"My parents are the most amazing people in my life. I love them so much. I was just like, 'I did it', and we all started crying."

She also came into the Olympics wanting to win a gold for all the Hmong-Americans whom she feels are unseen in the US. And this, at a time when the country is contending with a surge in anti-Asian violence.

"People hate on us for no reason," she told Elle magazine earlier this year. "It would be cool to show that we are more than what they say."

Ironically, Lee, whose uneven bar routines are among the most difficult in the world, had not even expected to try for gold in Tokyo.

When her Midwest Gymnastics gym closed because of the coronavirus pandemic in March last year, she was stuck at home with her parents and five siblings, without a proper place to train.

After the gym reopened about two months later, Lee fractured her left ankle on a fall from the uneven bars.

Not long after, she spent nearly two weeks in isolation with what she assumes was Covid-19. She also lost a beloved aunt and uncle to the disease.

However, she fought through those hurdles and her opportunity came when teammate Simone Biles withdrew from both the team and individual all-around, citing mental health issues.

Lee and her teammates stepped up and won silver in the team event, before she succeeded the greatest gymnast of her generation - who was watching from the front row - as the women's all-round gold medallist and the fifth consecutive American winner.

"Going into this meet, I feel like there was a lot of pressure on me because I have been second to her (Biles) the whole season," she said.

"So I knew that people were kind of counting on me to either get second or win the gold medal.

"I try not to focus on that because I knew that I would get too nervous."

Lee began gymnastics at age six, after her mother, Yeev Thoj, exasperated at her acrobatics around the house, took her to a local gym. John had first coached her and nurtured her talent.

"This was our dream. It sucks he couldn't be here (in Japan)," she said. "We always talked about this. If I were to win a gold medal, he would come out on the floor and be back there with me."

This support came into play on Thursday too.

"He told me to go out there and do my best," Lee said. "He told me not to focus on scores or anything like that, because in their hearts, I was already a winner."

John, who arrived in America to seek refuge after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, added: "People say the United States is the land of opportunity, and I'm living proof of that. For my kid, a Hmong girl, to be on the world stage, winning a gold medal, it's just the best feeling ever."

NYTIMES, REUTERS