Olympic all-around champion Suni Lee said her upcoming sophomore season at Auburn will be her last and that she will return to elite gymnastics after this winter in a bid for the 2024 Paris Games.
“I don’t want it [the Olympics] to just be once in a lifetime,” she said in a video posted Tuesday. “I have my sights set on Paris in 2024, and I know what I have to do to get there. I’m looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and putting in the work.”
Lee, 19, hasn’t competed in elite international gymnastics since the Tokyo Games. She competed last winter and spring for Auburn in the NCAA, which has a different scoring system than the Olympics and usually requires different routines.
She took runner-up in April’s NCAA Championships all-around behind Trinity Thomas of Florida. She also won the balance beam title and helped Auburn to a fourth-place team finish, the best in program in history.
Lee then signaled a return to elite in July by participating in her first U.S. national team camp since the Tokyo Games.
Without Lee (and without Rio Olympic all-around champ Simone Biles), the U.S. women’s gymnastics team won the world title two weeks ago. Shilese Jones took all-around silver at worlds, where Lee’s Tokyo Olympic teammates Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles each won three medals.
The upcoming NCAA season runs from January into April. Lee has not said whether she plans to return to elite competition for the summer 2023 season, or if it will be in 2024 before the Paris Games.
Most Olympic medalist gymnasts who took breaks from elite came back before the Olympic year. Biles returned from a two-year competition break in 2018. Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman took time off after the 2012 London Games and returned to competition in March 2015.
Biles has not competed since Tokyo and also not ruled out a return ahead of Paris 2024.
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thank you to my @AuburnU family, you’ll forever have a special place in my heart. let’s make this season the best one yet. WAR EAGLE! pic.twitter.com/8ezp9WdM04
— Sunisa lee (@sunisalee_) November 15, 2022
This week’s NHK Trophy will be decisive for several U.S. figure skaters eyeing spots in December’s Grand Prix Final, the most important competition of the fall and often a preview of March’s world championships.
NHK Trophy, which airs live on Peacock, features American women, a pair and ice dancers vying for the Final, which takes the top six per discipline from the six-event Grand Prix Series. NHK in Japan is the fourth of six events, and skaters compete twice over the series, so some skaters have already qualified.
Ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates head the U.S. contingent this week. The three-time world medalists won Skate America last month and will clinch a Grand Prix Final spot by finishing third or higher at NHK.
They would be the first U.S. skaters in any discipline to qualify for seven Grand Prix Finals (if including last year, when the Final was canceled after the qualifying series finished) and the second to compete in six Finals after 2014 Olympic ice dance champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White.
Bates, 33, can break the record for oldest American to qualify for a Final currently held by pairs’ skater Todd Sand from the 1996-97 season. Bates is already the only U.S. figure skater to compete in four Winter Olympics and the oldest to win a medal (in the team event).
This season, Chock and Bates rank fifth in the world by best total score (202.80). Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who are not in the NHK field, have the best score of 215.70. None of the Olympic ice dance medalists are competing internationally this fall.
NHK Trophy Broadcast Schedule
While Chock and Bates are podium regulars, Americans Starr Andrews and Amber Glenn enter NHK coming off their first Grand Prix medals. Andrews, with her silver at Skate Canada two weeks ago, became the first Black American to make a Grand Prix podium. Andrews and Glenn likely need to finish in the top three again this week for any shot at the Grand Prix Final.
It’s a tall order. NHK has arguably the best women’s field of the six Grand Prix events, including world champion Kaori Sakamoto, Skate Canada winner Rinka Watanabe, both of Japan, and South Korean Kim Ye-Lim, who was second at Grand Prix France.
Another American, Isabeau Levito, the world junior champion, is not competing at NHK but can clinch her Grand Prix Final spot depending on other skaters’ results this week. At 15, she would be the youngest American to make a Final in 15 years.
World champion Shoma Uno of Japan headlines the men’s field. Uno, who won Skate Canada with 273.15 points, ranks third in the world this season by best total score. American Ilia Malinin, who is not at NHK, leads with 280.37 points.
NHK also has the world’s top-ranked pairs’ team of Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan. The next-highest-ranked pairs’ team at NHK is the U.S. duo of Emily Chan and Spencer Howe. Chan and Howe, fourth at last season’s nationals, will clinch their first Grand Prix Final berth if they repeat their runner-up finish from Skate Canada.
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Greg Louganis, arguably the greatest and most famous diver in history, put his remaining Olympic medals up for sale as part of an auction to finance the next chapter of his life and to benefit charity.
Louganis, who swept the springboard and platform titles at the Olympics in 1984 and 1988, has a memorabilia auction on his website running to Dec. 4. The medals are listed separately “for private sale” with an option to make an offer. Louganis will see how the auction and offers unfold before determining how many, if any, of his medals he will part with.
The 62-year-old said friends have reached out to ask if everything is OK. He assured them that he’s fine.
Louganis, who previously gave two of his four Olympic gold medals to people close to him, never considered selling his other medals until recently giving it a lot of thought. He was partly inspired by the Marie Kondo book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.”
“We collect, we collect, we collect, and then it serves its purpose, and then we let it go,” he said. “[The sale] is an opportunity for those medals to have a life beyond.
“A lot of times we hold things so preciously that it ends up you get strangled by it. Holding things with a light touch is another practice that I’m adapting.”
Louganis previously gave his 1984 Olympic platform gold medal to his coach, Ron O’Brien.
He gave his 1988 Olympic springboard gold medal, which he won after hitting his head on the board on a preliminary dive, to Jeanne White-Ginder. She is the mother of Ryan White, who became a national figure in the 1980s after developing AIDS from a blood transfusion to treat hemophilia. White successfully fought to attend public school after a middle school banned him. White died in 1990 at age 18. That medal has been on display as part of the Ryan White collection at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum.
Louganis revealed in the mid-1990s that he had been HIV positive at the time of the 1988 Seoul Games. He said White, whom he had met in 1986, was his inspiration to get through that springboard event after hitting his head and getting stitched up after bleeding into the pool.
Louganis’ medals for sale: his 1976 Olympic platform silver medal, won at age 16 in a duel with Italian legend Klaus Dibiasi. And his first and last Olympic gold medals from the springboard in 1984 and the platform in 1988.
Louganis said at least 10 percent of the proceeds from his auction and potential medal sales will go to non-profits — the Damien Center, the largest AIDS care provider in Indiana, and Children’s Rights, which works to protect children and keep families together. The auction date range includes World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.
“Greg personally owning his HIV status has provided a beacon of hope to those living with it, proving that an HIV diagnosis does not mean that your life is over,” Damien Center President and CEO Alan Witchey said. “His work on HIV awareness and LGBTQ+ issues has empowered a generation to end the HIV epidemic.”
The money will also help him launch the GEL Dogjo, a health-and-wellness center for humans and dogs, and the Frances Louganis Foundation, named after his adoptive mom, which will support Olympians transitioning to life after the Games and a variety of causes including LGBTQ+, foster care and adoption, mental health and brain injuries and concussions.
Louganis plans to hand deliver any medal that he sells and offer to share stories over a meal.
People who have visited Louganis’ California house often ask if they can see his medals. His typical response has been, “If I can find them.” Usually they are packed in a bag, a drawer or in his garage.
“The medals, it’s in the history books,” he said. “They don’t define me. That’s just a part of who I am, but it’s not all of who I am.”
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Suni Lee to leave Auburn after this season, return to elite gymnastics for Olympic run – NBC Sports
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