Children from Suni Lee's home gym in Minnesota were all gathered to cheer for the gymnast winning bronze at the Paris Olympics 2024

By Soumik Bhattacharya

Modified Aug 01, 2024 20:26 GMT

As Suni Lee clinched her second all-around Olympic medal (bronze) at the French capital, the children around the 21-year-old's home gym gathered to watch her perform in the all-around event finals. This comes after her superb performance a few days ago during the team all-around finals that gave the USA its fourth gold medal.

Lee scored 56.565 points to edge Italy's Alice D'Amato to reach the podium consecutively for the second time in the all-around events of the Olympics (she clinched gold last time around in Tokyo).

Her countrywoman, Simone Biles, topped the charts this time around with 59.131 points to clinch her second Olympic all-around gold medal. Brazil's Rebeca Andrade finished second on the podium with 57.932 points.

Suni Lee started off her first rotation with vaults scoring an impressive 13.933 points but couldn't top the gold and silver medal-winning Biles and Andrade who scored 15.766 and 15.100 points respectively. However, Lee returned strongly in the uneven bars apparatus during her second rotation to score 14.866 points, more than Biles and Andrade (13.733 and 14.666 points).

Her next two rotations included the balance beam and floor exercises apparatus in which the 21-year-old scored 14.000 points and 13.666 points respectively to post a handsome point tally and earn a place on the podium. She did this in front of the little children who gathered in Minnesota to see their native girl perform at the biggest sporting event of the year.

The official X handle of NBC shared this post on their feed in which the children assembled with t-shirts saying, "Team Suni".

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Suni Lee overcomes severe kidney disease to add another Olympic medal to her tally

PSuni Lee at the 2024 Paris Olympic 2024 (Image via: Getty Images)

Following Suni Lee's gold medal-winning performance in Tokyo, the 21-year-old has gone through a lot of physical and mental turmoil due to the kidney diseases that she suffered. Owing to this, the Minnesota native also had to stay away from the gymnastics mat for a prolonged period.

In an interview during the Today Show, Lee also shared that she was almost on the verge of quitting the sport.

"There were so many times where I thought about quitting and just giving up because I was so sick."

But the 21-year-old didn't give up on her dreams and made it to the Team USA Gymnastics team for the Paris Olympics. She has already clinched a gold (team all-around) and a bronze medal (individual all-around) with two individual apparatus finals still to go (uneven bars and beam balance).