Minnesotans Suni Lee, Grace McCallum join Simone Biles on U.S. Olympic gymnastics team

ST. LOUIS – All she had to do was breathe. Suni Lee knew she was prepared for this moment, to perform her very best when it counted the most.

"I just told myself to take deep breaths and do what I normally do," the St. Paul gymnast said. "This was the time when I had to just let my gymnastics do its thing. I just had to let everything go."

Lee fought off her nerves in a spectacular performance Sunday at the Olympic trials, joining Simone Biles as automatic selections for the four-woman U.S. gymnastics team at the Tokyo Summer Games. While Lee earned her berth by finishing second to Biles in the all-around competition, another Minnesotan — Grace McCallum of Isanti — was named to the team by a selection committee, along with Biles' training partner Jordan Chiles.

MyKayla Skinner was chosen to compete as an individual in Tokyo, joining Jade Carey in the two individual spots earned by the U.S. Biles finished the competition with a two-day all-around score of 118.098, followed by Lee (115.832), Chiles (114.631), McCallum (112.564) and Skinner (112.264).

Sunday's results made Minnesotans 3-for-3 at the trials, after former Gopher Shane Wiskus of Spring Park earned an Olympic berth on the men's side Saturday.

On a night when jitters knocked some gymnasts off stride, Lee sparkled at The Dome at America's Center. She was one of the few to get through Sunday's competition without a significant mistake, earning the highest all-around score of the day — even beating Biles, considered the greatest gymnast in history. Biles had some uncharacteristic errors, including a fall from the balance beam.

Lee's Sunday score was 58.166, ahead of Biles' 57.533. According to Nick Zaccardi of nbcolympics.com, it marked the first time Biles was outscored in a single day of all-around competition since Day 2 of her first appearance at the senior level of the U.S. championships in 2013.

Lee is believed to be the first Hmong-American to make a U.S. Olympic team.

Tom Forster, USA Gymnastics' high performance team coordinator for the women's program and a member of the committee, said it was a very close decision between McCallum and Skinner for the final team spot. According to Forster, a computer simulation showed the difference in potential team scores was only "a couple of tenths" of a point when each was plugged into the equation.

That made it "appropriate," he added, to choose the higher-ranked athlete at the trials.

"It was a great, great competition," Forster said. "We knew it was going to be tough [to choose]. Our goal was for the athletes to kind of pick themselves."

Lee finished with the highest two-day scores on uneven bars (30.200) and beam (29.466). She is considered a favorite to win the gold medal on bars at the Olympics, with her highest-scoring routine the most difficult being performed by any gymnast in the world.

Like Wiskus, who endured the elimination of the Gophers' program and an unexpected change in his training base, Lee persisted through a year of turmoil and heartache. She struggled to find motivation to train after her gym shut down during the pandemic. A broken foot sidelined her for a time, and she lost two close relatives to COVID-19.

At her lowest point, Lee said, "I felt like I wasn't good enough anymore, almost." But her long-held goal of making it to the Olympics kept tugging at her, eventually guiding Lee back on track.

Lee said before the trials that she hoped to replicate — or even improve upon — her performance at the U.S. championships three weeks ago, when she was second to Biles in the all-around and won the bars title. She performed with cool confidence throughout both days of the trials.

Sunday, Lee started on vault and hit a double twisting Yurchenko that scored .200 higher than her Day 1 effort. She glided through her bars routine for a score of 14.900, with just a tiny hop on the dismount.

Many women struggled on balance beam Sunday, including Biles, who fell midway through her performance. Lee got through without a wobble for a score of 14.733 and finished strong on floor exercise to wrap up her Olympic spot.

"I felt like I had to make myself breathe, and not get too ahead of myself, because I was getting a little nervous," Lee said. "After I finally calmed myself down, I think it helped a lot."

McCallum, who wasn't made available to reporters Sunday night, encountered difficulty on her road to the Games, too. In January, she broke her hand while practicing a beam routine. It took a plate and seven screws to repair the fracture; while she was healing, she developed an infection and pulled a muscle.

She kept plugging away, an attitude that helped Sunday as well. McCallum started the day in fifth place, in between Skinner and Kayla DiCello with only .300 of a point separating the three. She moved up to fourth by improving her first-day marks on vault and bars, then got through a gritty performance on beam.

Her first significant error came on her final event, when McCallum bounced out of bounds on the first tumbling pass of her floor exercise routine. But she held on to fourth place by .300 over Skinner.

Though Biles did not have her best performance, she said she was looking forward to her second Olympics.

"I'm very relieved the Olympic trials are over, and super excited," Biles said. "I'm going to enjoy training and enjoy the moment. It's been a long journey from 2016 to now.''