American Olympic gymnastics hero Sunisa ‘Suni’ Lee has revealed more about her battle with an unnamed and incurable kidney disease that threatened her athletic career.
Lee recently wrote an essay in Women’s Health magazine – speaking about the ‘hardest’ parts of living with her affliction.
She also reveals how dealing with it has led to her becoming ‘a stronger Suni than I ever thought I could be.’
The 22-year-old Minnesota native says she was at her ‘lowest low’ when doctors initially informed her that the disease would prevent her from pursuing gymnastics.
‘It never occurred to me that it could happen to someone my age or someone as healthy and fit as I was,’ Lee wrote.
‘But in that moment, when everything came crashing down, I also felt my greatest surge of determination,’ she added.
Olympic hero Sunisa ‘Suni’ Lee has opened up more on her battle with a kidney disease
Lee says this disease, which has no cure, threatened her professional gymnastics career
‘I saw the challenge laid out before me, and I faced it head-on. I thought to myself, just watch.’
Lee has never publicly revealed her specific diagnosis, outside of revealing that it’s uncommon and has no cure.
She’s previously said that the affliction caused her to gain ’40 pounds’ and also led to swelling which ‘affected my whole body and how I looked and how I was feeling.’
Lee said that she experienced ‘racing’ thoughts in the early days of her diagnosis and that she was ‘so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to compete again.’
‘It was heart-wrenching not being able to do the thing I loved. Gymnastics is my safe space,’ she wrote.
‘Whenever I’m working through anything emotionally, I go to the gym and work it out. It’s my therapy. It’s my sacred place.’
The disease led to her dropping out of the gymnastics team at Auburn University in 2023 and steering away from World Championships Selection Camp that same year.
Eventually, she was able to find a way to manage her symptoms enough to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympic games.
But Lee was able to battle through the affliction to win gold and two bronze medals in Paris
Lee says she fought through frustrations associated with the ailment (the specifics of which, she hasn’t publicly revealed): ‘I thought about little Suni and the big dreams she had’
Lee says that she’s pursuing other passions – such as acting and fashion – without any goal
She was a part of the group that won gold in the Team All-Around event. Lee also won bronze in the individual all-around and the uneven bars.
But this is still something that she deals with every day, with Lee saying it’s hard ‘knowing that I will have it for my whole life.’
‘It will never go away, and I have to face the fact that I will never be the same Suni I was before everything happened,’ she added.
While admitting that there were days she would ‘leave the gym in anger… determined to quit,’ Lee added that she found ways to motivate herself.
‘I thought about little Suni and the big dreams she had,’ the Olympian continued. ‘And I knew I couldn’t let that little girl and her big dreams down. So I kept pushing, kept putting one foot in front of the other — every day a little stronger, every day doing my best and nothing more or less.’
To help pursue her non-athletic passions such as acting and fashion, Lee says she’s ‘taking some time for myself, without the pressure of a huge goal, for the first time in my life.’
Despite knowing that she’ll ‘never be the Suni’ she was before, that’s fine with her ‘because I am a stronger Suni than I ever thought I could be.’
