Suni Lee doesn’t expect finishing ahead of Simone Biles to be anything other than an aberration. Like all other gymnasts, she knows Biles is in a division of her own.
But if making the U.S. team for the Tokyo Olympics weren’t enough for Lee to relish, she bested the sport’s greatest gymnast in the all-around on Sunday.
Lee, 18, locked up one of the two guaranteed spots for the team with her second-place finish in the two-day event. And it took an uncharacteristically human night from Biles – with a mistake on uneven bars, a fall on balance beam and a step out of bounds on each of her first two floor passes – for Lee to hold the advantage.
But in a year when she’s battled through an ankle injury to make the team, it was a welcome surprise.
“I think that gives me a lot of confidence, especially because I still haven’t done all four passes on floor and then my bar routine could have been a little bit better,” Lee said. “I know it probably won’t happen again because her floor and vault, and she usually is pretty good on everything else. But I was really excited.”
