Sunisa Lee

“When I'm scared of hurting myself, I start to overthink things and won't go for it.”

“I knew the coronavirus was a real thing, but it really hit home when my aunt died, and it was really hard to watch my mom go through that with her sister.”

“Usually, Hmong funerals last several days and our whole family comes together for it. It's a Hmong tradition to fold thousands of little paper boats with silver or gold paper that represent money the person could take into the afterlife, but we couldn't do that because of the coronavirus.”

“I didn't even think that I could be competing for a gold medal; I was convinced I'd compete for a silver medal.”

“The uneven bars make me especially nervous because when you stop training, you lose sense of where the bar is going to be.”

“It's just I spend more time on bars and beam. I obviously want to perfect those and get those to be the best that I can be because those are going to be my strongest events and the two events that I could contribute to the team.”

“I realized that I could actually miss practice and rest, then come back to the gym and still have my skills.”

“I focus more on bars and beam just because those are my strongest events, and I just try and maintain whatever I can do on floor and vault. I'm consistently training on all events.”

“After you take time off, it can be really scary to do the harder things you used to do, and I personally hate being scared.”

“I've talked to Simone Biles a lot, and it's really nice to get to know her in this way because she was my idol and I used to see her as this intimidating gold medalist, but now she's a friend.”

“For me, I know that people always expect me to be perfect, so when I'm not perfect, it's really frustrating. I'm really hard on myself and want things to work out right away.”