All The Top Moments From Suni Lee’s Gold Medal Performance

You have all certainly been following the drama of Team USA’s big gymnastics star, Simone Biles, withdrawing from competition due to mental incapacity risking her safety in completing high flying tricks. Biles stepped aside allowing individual competitor, Jade Carey, to participate in the All-Around finals and making room for her closest team rival, Sunisa Lee, to give the All-Around performance of her life and take home gold for Team USA. 

Lee had a lot of pressure on her shoulders trying to maintain the USA tradition where the a USA woman has won All-Around gold every Olympics since 2004.

Here are her top moments that made Team USA proud: 

1. Her 15.3 point swanlike bar routine 

Suni Lee’s best apparatus is bars. She’s been beating Simone Biles on bars for the last few competitive rounds. Lee soared from bar to bar more visually ballerina than gymnast, more bird than human, and nearly perfectly stuck her landing clinching a massive 15.3 points. 

2. Her amazing beam save 

Midway through her beam routine, Lee nearly fell off while working her wolf turn but managed a miraculous save only fractions of a point off taking the lead for gold.

3. When she could not resist smiling after absolutely STICKING her vault 

The vault apparatus is known for hops and off center landings due to the difficulty of aiming the body exactly straight while twisting through the air. With gold on the line, Suni Lee landed on the dead center line with no hops receiving no deductions for execution and a big 14.6 score. It’s rare to see a vault landing as perfectly as Lee’s. 

4. Her elation on confirmation that she’d taken the gold

Suni Lee was not meant to content for all-around gold. The world had given the gold to Simone Biles as a forgone conclusion and all Lee was meant to be able to do was hope for a chance at the silver and maybe gold on the individual apparatus of bars. Simone Biles medical sit out opened the doors for Lee to not only win gold but realize that she is an equal competitor to Biles and give her to confidence to be the American champion she is meant to be.