PARIS — Living in the era of Simone Biles’ dominance would be a challenge for any gymnast, but Suni Lee and Jordan Chiles are reveling in their own Olympic spotlights.
They have not only weathered the rarified, if precarious road back to the Olympic Games, but are rapidly climbing the ranks of the sport’s most decorated gymnasts.
Lee became a five-time Olympic medalist in Paris after clinching her second all-around medal Thursday, a bronze, and the pair helped lead the U.S. “Golden Girls” to the top of the podium in Tuesday’s team event.
Throughout their Olympic encore, Lee and Chiles observed a burgeoning lightness and international kinship in elite gymnastics.
“I think the environment has changed so much in gymnastics to where it almost feels like you’re at an NCAA meet now,” Lee said of the competitive camaraderie in Paris. “People will cheer after your first pass, like we can we smile, we’re laughing, we’re having fun on the floor.”
After the Tokyo Olympics, both Lee and Chiles competed in college gymnastics, where the sport’s hallmark intensity is often colored by team spirit, spunk and a unifying exuberance.
Chiles credits “the voices of the athletes” with breaking the icy tension of the Olympic environment.
“We do have big voices and I feel like if you can hear it and you are understanding it, it will kind of bring that atmosphere back up throughout our sport,” she said.
It’s not just the culture that has changed for Lee, who faced an even steeper climb to the Olympic podium the second time around.
After winning the Olympic all-around title in 2021, she found herself launched into unexpected, dizzying fame. Stalkers, family strife and an onslaught of health problems threatened to take the glimmer out of her gold medal.
“I feel like it’s really different because last Olympics, you know, coming in, I wasn’t really expecting to win the gold medal,” Lee said. “So I didn’t know how to take it all in, whereas this one, I really worked hard to get to where I am right now.”
A year ago, Lee’s body was so swollen while battling a serious kidney disease that Lee says she gained 40 pounds of water weight and couldn’t even fasten her grips to mount her signature event, the uneven bars.
“Having to go through everything that I went through, but making it to here has just been amazing,” Lee said. “I wasn’t expecting to even podium here.”
“I love my medal,” she added with a grin.
In an echo of the Tokyo win that upended her life, Lee clinched the all-around bronze by a tenth of a point, the equivalent of a bauble on the balance beam. To return to the all-around podium, she had to deliver the best floor routine of her career and outscore her stellar outing in the team final.
“Before my floor routine, I was just kind of telling myself that you got this,” Lee said. “Coming here was the biggest goal so to even make it and be able to be in an all-around final was absolutely amazing.”
Nobody in the crowd was cheering louder when Lee stuck her first tumbling pass than Chiles, who expertly channels her idol, Beyoncé, when she takes the competition floor.
“I just want to kind of bring the vibe and make the crowd involved,” Chiles said of her “Renaissance”-inspired floor routine. “You know, we’re entertainment, why not entertain the crowd in a magnificent way? So I really enjoyed it.”
They’re not done yet.
Chiles is poised to return to the stage in Monday’s floor finals, alongside Biles, who is not only her two-time Olympic teammate, but also her training mate in Spring, Texas.
Lee only has two more items left on her Paris wishlist: bars and beam medals.
“Coming into this Olympics, all of us felt like we had something to like redeem or prove,” Lee said. “My biggest one is probably beam and bar finals … I’m a little nervous.”
Lee will contend for a bars medal Sunday and a spot on the beam podium Monday, which is the final day of gymnastics in Paris.
Kaetlyn Liddy reported from New York and Tom Llamas reported from Paris
