Suni Lee places her Tokyo Olympics gold medal around dad’s neck in emotional family reunion Thursday-
The following written content by Yaron Steinbuch
Newly crowned all-around gymnastics champ Suni Lee celebrated her triumph by placing her Tokyo Olympics gold medal around her paralyzed father’s neck during an emotional reunion Thursday in the Big Apple with her proud family.
“Amazing, I haven’t seen them in so long,” Lee said on NBC’s “Today” show. “To see them here with me in New York is absolutely amazing. I feel so proud. I’m so happy to see them.”
The 18-year-old Minnesotan — who also won silver in the team final and bronze in the uneven bars — gave her dad, Houa John Lee, a big hug as she placed the medal around his neck.
“Oh my God. I never thought I would ever get one of these, and she did it,” John said. “She got it, she brought it home.”
He added: “You did great, you did it! I’m so proud of her.”
Also on hand were Lee’s mother, Yeev Thoj, and two siblings, Jonah and Shyenne.
Lee, who has said her family and Minnesota’s Hmong community played a major role in her success, also placed her silver medal around her mom’s neck.
“It’s like happy tears,” Thoj said on the show. “Just thinking of all the hard work that she has done in the past four years and every time she has a bad day and she comes home crying, and that kind of hurts me, and so to see her with the gold medal, it just makes me happy.”
John later shared a photo of himself sporting all of his daughter’s medals on Facebook.
“Here you go. The whole collections,” he captioned the image. “Now we can really say we did it or should say SHE DID IT.”
John has said that his daughter, who placed second behind Simone Biles in the national championships, almost didn’t go to Tokyo because he was in surgery. He was partially paralyzed after falling from a ladder in 2019. Read more from NY Post.
