2 0
2 1“Team USA, when they go to the Olympics, they win,”
Lee says. “It was in the back of our heads, like, People are
gonna hate us. They’re going to be disappointed. But we all
knew that that was a really good performance. And we
didn’t need a gold medal for people to know what was
going on, because that is a really hard situation to go
through. And we all had to step up to the plate to do that.”
NEXT FOR LEE WAS THE INDIVIDUAL
all-around final. She spent the intervening two days put-
ting pressure on herself. She had trained to be “within
a mistake of Simone,” says Graba. If Biles faltered, Lee
would be in a position to take advantage. But no one really
expected that to happen—least of all Lee. So now she had
to reshape her entire view of herself.
“Not having Simone there just
made it super nerve-racking,” she
says. “You had Simone at the top,
and I’m like, O.K., I’ll just stick with
second! I’m good there!”
Again, Lee reminded herself:
Her normal was good enough. She
pushed away her fear. “I totally
don’t get it,” says sister Shyenne.
“I personally would not be able to
do that. But she’s very strong.”
That morning, Lee made a gam-
ble. Graba had been trying to per-
suade her for seven months to lower
the difficulty on her f loor routine
by eliminating her fourth pass. If
she hit the easier version perfectly,
she could improve her score. Lee
refused. But she noticed that the
judges were scoring her landings
harshly, meaning that a misstep
on that difficult last pass could be
catastrophic. Hours before the final,
she agreed to make a change. They
quickly drew up new choreography,
but Lee didn’t have time to practice
the routine straight through.
Her 14.600 on vault that evening
tied a career best. She notched the
highest score in the competition, a
15.300, on her specialty, the uneven
bars. And though she looked shaky
on the balance beam, she came
up with a 13.833 to pull ahead of
Rebeca Andrade of Brazil. All that
remained was the f loor exercise.
Lee took a small hop on the land-
ing of the first pass. She nailed the
second. She nailed the third. TheBAR RAISED
For all her brilliance at the
Games, Lee remains frustrated
that she finished third in her best
event, the uneven bars.