Olympic gymnast Suni Lee is making a comeback after her battle with an incurable kidney disease
“Never let life’s setbacks stop you from going after your dreams.”
“Never let life’s setbacks stop you from going after your dreams.”
“Never let life’s setbacks stop you from going after your dreams.”
Sunisa "Suni" Lee captured the gold medal in the all-around competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics — and she's officially headed to Paris 2024 for a second Olympic run.
The 21-year-old who also competes at the NCAA Division I level for Auburn University finished second at the Olympic trials on June 30, solidifying her spot on Team USA along with Simone Biles, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles and Hezly Rivera.
Video above: Suni Lee, Simone Biles and Jade Carey speak at a news conference after Olympic trials
For Lee, competing in a second Olympics was a bigger challenge than most fans realize.
She recently revealed that she’s been quietly going through a serious health journey on the sidelines. The Minnesota native hinted at her health issues in an Instagram post about her finish at the national championships, writing, “This one hit different. see you at Olympic trials!!!!” in the caption.
So what’s going on with Lee, and how is her health now? Here’s what she’s shared.
What happened to Suni Lee?
In 2023, Lee shared in an interview with SELF that she was recently diagnosed with incurable kidney disease. The gymnast said she had to finish her gymnastics season at Auburn early due to her diagnosis and put her training on pause for six months.
About a month after she first developed symptoms, she stopped training entirely, left Auburn, and moved back home.
“I was just rotting in my bed,” she told Sports Illustrated. “I couldn’t talk to anybody. I didn’t leave the house.”
What is incurable kidney disease?
Lee didn’t share an exact diagnosis with the public, but she did reveal that her condition has no cure. Her medical team also thinks her diagnosis may change as they learn more about what’s happening with her health, SELF reports. The magazine also notes that her condition isn’t common.
Her doctors later realized that Lee had two forms of kidney disease, according to Sports Illustrated.
How do you stop kidney disease from getting worse?
There are two main causes of kidney disease, according to the American Diabetes Association — diabetes and high blood pressure. With that, there are a few things that many people with kidney disease can do to stop the progression of the condition.
That includes managing your blood pressure, monitoring your blood glucose, eating a kidney-friendly diet, exercising regularly, and being cautious about taking OTC medications and supplements.
Lee first experienced symptoms in February 2023.
Lee shared that she first developed symptoms when she woke up one morning with swollen ankles, which she originally thought was due to her intense training. But her entire body was swollen the next morning, including her face, legs, and hands.
Her doctors originally thought Lee was having an allergic reaction, but the swelling didn’t go down. “I just kept getting more swollen…and I think I gained, like, 40 pounds,” Lee said. "It affected my whole body and how I looked and how I was feeling."
After Lee told her doctor that she was having trouble urinating, she underwent more tests and eventually had a biopsy of her kidneys. That led to her diagnosis.
She thought she might never be able to do gymnastics again.
Lee said that she was understandably scared while doctors tried to work out a diagnosis. When she tried to train, she found that she couldn’t perform the way she normally did.
“I kept peeling off the bar. I couldn’t hold on,” Lee said. “My fingers were so swollen, and I couldn’t even do a normal kip cast to handstand on bars.”
She remembered thinking, “What if I’m never allowed to do gymnastics again or I can never make it to the Olympics again?”
She’s on the mend and is 'excited' to get back out there.
Lee nabbed a bronze medal on beam at the 2023 U.S. Championships, but declined an invitation to the world team selection camp in 2023 a few weeks later, per NBC Sports.
“I think my lowest point was after championships,” Lee told the outlet at the Team USA media summit. “I don't know. I pulled out of the world championship selection camp and I stopped doing gymnastics for four months.”
But things started to turn around for Lee in January 2024, when she got a phone call that changed everything. “It was just, like, a simple phone call,” she told NBC Olympics. “I can’t really talk about it, but it was a simple phone call. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm going to the gym tomorrow and I'm gonna be better than I ever was.’ And that was the day I was like, ‘Yep, this is what I want. And I'm gonna put my mind into it.’"
“That’s when she started saying, ‘I think they’re getting a handle on it,’ ” her trainer Jess Graba told Sports Illustrated.
Lee is now on medication to help control her conditions, and they're now in remission. “We have it under control now,” she told CBS News at a Team USA media summit. “We know what to do and the right medication to take.”
Lee knows that this is uncharted territory for her — and for her training team.
“My coaches have never had to deal with someone who has had two kidney diseases,” she told NBC Olympics at the Team USA media summit. “And obviously, I'm like, ‘Okay, I don't know any other gymnasts that have two kidney diseases that have had to go through this.’ So it's all a learning process. And we're taking it day by day.”
But she’s also optimistic about the future. “This comeback was so much more than my return to elite gymnastics,” she wrote on Instagram last year. “It was me proving to myself that I can overcome hard things, and to hopefully inspire others to never let life’s setbacks stop you from going after your dreams.”
Lee told Women’s Health at the Team USA Media Summit that she’s focused on her training and is doing "everything possible" to make the Paris team.
“It feels really good to be able to just go out and to wake up in the morning and be able to go to practice,” she said. “My doctor told me that we would never thought that I would be here, so it feels really good to be able to be doing gymnastics.”
