Suni Lee

Sunisa “Suni” Lee is paving the way for Hmong Americans gymnasts around the world in collegiate sports and the Olympics. Suni secured a gold medal in her 2020 Olympic debut in Tokyo in the all-around event at 18, making her the first Hmong American gymnast to compete, and medal, in the Olympics. 

Suni grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, surrounded by a large Hmong community that moved to the area as refugees in the late 1970s and 1980s. Suni jumped right into gymnastics at age 6, where she showed an immense amount of promise at an early age. Suni caught the eye of Jess Graba, a coach at Midwest Gymnastics, who has continued to train her ever since. In 2016, at the age of 14, she competed internationally with the US Junior National Team. In 2018, she won the gold medal at the National Championships on the uneven bars—further positioning her as an Olympic team hopeful. But the final two years leading up to the Olympics in Tokyo would prove challenging in unexpected ways.  

As so many suffered throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Suni felt the devastation very personally, as she lost both her aunt and uncle to the virus less than two weeks apart. Her aunt and uncle were a big part of her gymnastics career, as her uncle was a Hmong shaman who helped heal an injured foot using herbal medicines and hot ginger. While mourning the deaths of her aunt and uncle, she was also helping take care of her father, who was left paralyzed after an accident in 2019, two days before the National Championships. Suni’s father encouraged her to still go and compete in the competition, as the event was an unofficial pre-qualifier for the Games. Suni went on to win silver in the all-around and perfected one of the toughest bar routines in the world, paving the way for her entrance to the Olympics. 

After her first-place win in the all-around event in the 2020 Summer Olympics, Suni was included in Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world for 2021. Suni now attends and competes for Auburn University, with this past season (2022-2023) being her last so she can prepare for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. To honor the history Suni made as a Hmong American at the Olympics with her gold medal performance, Governor Tim Walz proclaimed that Friday, July 30, 2021, as Sunisa Lee Day in Minnesota.