St. Paul gymnast Suni Lee made the Olympic team at 7:26 p.m Sunday. Never mind that there were still a couple of hours left in the Olympic Trials at Target Center in Minneapolis.

After defying logic with an ridiculous routine on uneven bars, Lee stuck the landing and let out a roar. The sold out crowd responded by showing love and showering her with a standing ovation. As she soaked in the moment, Lee had to know, deep down, that had done enough to qualify for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

As much as the rest of the night was more or less a coronation for Lee, it was also a personification of the mental toughness that helped her complete an incredible comeback.

She legitimately thought she might have to give up up gymnastics after being diagnosed with an incurable kidney disease. Now she’s headed back to the Olympics.

It’s impossible to overstate how challenging the past 18 months have been for Lee as she has navigated her new normal.

She had to end her collegiate career at Auburn University prematurely and spent time in a hospital bed as they tried to figure out what was wrong. She has made countless trips to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester in an effort to determine the medication she needs to take on a daily basis. She took some time off and only seriously started training around Christmas after after getting the green light from her doctors.

Nobody would’ve blamed Lee if she wanted to step away from the sport she loved. That’s just not how she’s wired.

As longtime coach Jess Graba so perfectly put it when talking about Lee before the Olympics Trials: When things get tough, she gets tougher.

That was on full display at the Olympic Trials as Lee faced adversity once more for good measure and responded with the heart of a champion.

After a masterful performance on uneven bars produced a score of 14.875 and essentially punched her ticket, Lee shockingly struggled on balance beam. She fell off during the initial mount, got back on, then nearly fell off again before somehow saving herself. She finished with a score of 12.825 and walked off visibly disappointed in herself.

Not that Lee was going to let that keep her down. She’s been to hell and back over the past 18 months and emerged on the other end stronger than ever before. Think a fall was going to faze her?

She composed herself backstage, returned for floor exercise, then promptly nailed her opening tumbling pass to take the edge off. That seemed to restore her confidence and Lee posted a score of 13.850 to get back on track. She capped the competition with an exclamation point on vault, twirling trough the air, planting her feet firmly into the ground, and positing a score of 14.100 to leave absolutely no doubt.

It became official for Lee roughly 45 minutes later as Lee was named to the Team USA roster.

The biggest cheer of the night came when Lee’s name was announced over the loud speakers. She couldn’t contain her emotions as she emerged from the tunnel. She cried tears of joy as she celebrated alongside teammates Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and Hezly Rivera, along with alternates Joscelyn Roberson and Leanne Wong.

After famously winning the gold medal in the all-around at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Lee will have a chance to defend her title at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. What an unbelievable accomplishment given everything she’s been through over the past 18 months.

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USA Gymnastics put together its women’s team for the 2024 Summer Games on Sunday night, and one has to like its chances in Paris. The team, determined after the U.S. Olympic Trials this week at Target Center, features the Games’ past two all-around gold medalists.

Simone Biles and St. Paul’s Sunisa Lee — who won the all-around gold medals at the 2016 and 2020 Summer Games, respectively — finished 1-2 in the Trials all-around after the last day of competition on Sunday.

Biles won the automatic qualification by winning the all-around with 117.225 points. The other four athletes were chosen by a strategic selection committee that convened immediately after Sunday’s competition. She and Lee will be joined in Paris by Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey, their teammate at the 2020 Games, and Hezly Rivera.

The selection committee is tasked with choosing the team USA Gymnastics believes has the best chance of medaling at the Games. Carey earned Team USA’s only individual event gold medal in Tokyo, the floor exercise.

Lee, who attended South St. Paul High School before matriculating to Auburn, was the breakout star of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, where she won the all-around gold medal and bronze in the uneven bars to help the U.S. win the team silver.

Biles returns to the Games for the third time. In 2016 in Rio De Janeiro, she powered the team to gold by winning the all-around, vault and floor exercise. She also earned bronze in the beam.

But after winning bronze in the beam in Tokyo, where the games were held in 2021 because of the COVID pandemic, Biles withdrew from the final three individual events after being overwhelmed with anxiety.

Since then, Biles, 27, has proven she is still the world’s best gymnast, winning the all-around at the 2023 world championships and earning gold in all four events at the 2024 U.S. championships.

She was a lock to make the 2024 Olympic team, and maybe Lee was, too — although she had more to prove than Biles. Diagnosed with chronic kidney disease early in 2023, she withdrew from Auburn and didn’t start training again until January of this year.

Lee, 21, won a couple of balance beam golds in national competitions, and won silver in the beam and placed fourth in the all-around at the U.S. Championships in late May, but this week was her biggest test.

She received a standing ovation, the first in four days of competition at Target Center this week, after her first routine, the balance bars. Her score, 14.875, gave her the top combination on the bars for the Trials, 29.275.

But Lee’s next routine, the balance beam — the other of her specialties — was uncharacteristically rough. She fell on her mount, then nearly fell again after a pair of difficult backward somersaults. Her score of 12.825 was her lowest of the competition.

But she rallied — her scores in the beam, floor and vault were improvements on her scores from Friday’s competition — for an overall score of 111.675. Chiles’ performance on the floor exercise (14.100) pushed her past Rivera for third in the all-around.

Briefly

— A small handful of challengers were eliminated by injuries this week. Skye Blakely injured an Achilles’ tendon during practices on Wednesday, and Kayla DiCello injured an Achilles on the first event of Friday’s competition. Shilese Jones suffered a leg injury during warmups Friday and withdrew from the Trials after being evaluated on Saturday.

— The U.S. men’s team, chosen Saturday after its second day of the Trials, was introduced during an intermission between rotations. Noticeably missing was Minnesota’s Shane Wiskus, who finished third in the all-around but was made a traveling alternate.

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Although the Mississippi River crested on Saturday afternoon and its levels are slowly dropping, it might be quite a while until parks, roads and trails are opened back up to the public, officials said Sunday.

The river crested in St. Paul at 20.17 feet Saturday afternoon and was at 19.6 feet on Sunday afternoon, said Lisa Hiebert, a spokesperson for St. Paul Public Works. This year saw the eighth-highest crest on record and fell just shy of the high level in 2019.

Just because the levels are receding doesn’t mean that much will change for now, Hiebert said, noting that the river’s level is still in “major flood” territory.

People still need to avoid anything that is closed off, she said.

“Please don’t go around anything that is barricaded,” she said. “I can’t stress that enough. That’s all in place for everyone’s safety.”

Everything that is now closed will remain closed for the time being, she said, noting that all the protective measures in place will remain, such as closures of trails, parks and launches.

And she is unable to say when this will change. “It will depend on the water levels decreasing, but just because the water recedes, there’s still a lot of work the city needs to do before reopening,” she said.

The city has to inspect the closed areas for damage, make repairs, take soil samples, clean and then remove all protective barriers and measures.

“All that takes time,” Hiebert said. “We just ask that people be patient. It’s going to take a little bit of time.”

For instance, in 2019, after flood waters receded on Water Street, an inspection found that the embankment was washed out, so the city had to completely redo the embankment and guardrail, which took nearly two years.

For updated information, visit stpaul.gov/flood.

In Stillwater, the Mississippi River is expected to crest at 1 a.m. Monday.

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