Suni And Brody Are Back. Gabby Is Coming Soon. Here’s What Else You Need To Know About The Gymnastics Winter Cup

Fans last saw Lee competing at the national championships in August, when a kidney condition was already causing her serious problems. A post on Lee’s Instagram last month stirred fresh excitement.

Not only did it show Lee back training at her Minnesota gym, but the 20-year-old executed a full-twisting Jaeger release move on the uneven bars. That’s a move no woman has performed in competition, and it turns out that’s the point.

The past year has been filled with uncertainty. Lee admits she “wasn’t in the greatest mindset.” Then, around the beginning of 2024, things started looking better.

“She felt like things were trending in the right way, so she wanted to start training,” said Jess Graba, her longtime coach.

They’ve been back in full training for about six weeks now. Lee describes her kidney condition as being “in remission” and says she’s “doing really good.” And while defending her Olympic title in Paris is the ultimate dream, she’s focusing on baby steps for now.

That’s where the full-twisting Jaeger comes in.

In gymnastics, an athlete who successfully performs a new skill at a major international event gets that skill named for them. Lee has such a skill now ready to go, so that’s her goal: Perform well enough at Winter Cup to be selected for the April world cup meet in Baku, Azerbaijan, and come home with “the Lee” added the sport’s code of points.

“I haven’t thought about anything else besides this meet and doing this skill,” Lee told reporters Friday. “So we really just want to go to Baku hopefully and get it named.”

Getting that out of the way in a lower-stakes international meet would be a sweet way to start what Lee hopes will be a memorable year. This weekend she plans to compete on two events — balance beam and uneven bars — before working her way back to full fitness for the all-around.

If all goes as planned, the St. Paul native would be selected for her second Olympic team in June, when the trials are held across the river from her hometown in Minneapolis. But that’s still months away.

“I’m not trying to think about the Olympics and everything afterward, because you never know what can happen,” Lee said. “So I’m just worrying about what comes next.”

Last March, while working through his high bar routine at a meet in Germany, Malone released early for his dismount. An awkward landing severely damaged his right knee, and in the process cast doubt on the U.S. men’s top medal hope for the Paris Games.

Malone, the 2021 and ’22 U.S. champion, initially hoped to be back in time to make a run at Paris as an event specialist. There was talk about him competing as soon as April. He’s already ahead of schedule. The 24-year-old took part in a pair of smaller meets in recent weeks and now says he’ll aim to compete the all-around by this summer, according to Neutral Deductions, a website the covers men’s gymnastics.

He’s planning to do pommel horse, still rings and parallel bars this weekend.

Malone burst onto the scene in 2021, dethroning six-time U.S. champ Sam Mikulak en route to making his first Olympic team. The NCAA champ from Stanford only improved from there, winning a high bar world title in 2022 while finishing fourth in the all-around.

Prior to his injury, Malone was seen as key to the U.S. team’s effort to return to the Olympic podium for the first time since 2008, to say nothing of his individual medal hopes.

The last time gymnastics fans saw Douglas was at the Olympic Games Rio 2016, where she won a team gold medal to go with the pair of golds she won in London.

Douglas was still at the top of her game and would have been a medal favorite in the all-around if not for a rule that limits countries to two gymnasts per final.

The first Black gymnast to win Olympic all-around gold largely retreated from the limelight after Rio, save a few reality TV appearances, but after watching the 2022 national championships she quietly returned to training, and in November she took part in her first national team camp.

Douglas, now 28, still needs to qualify for this year’s national championships, which she’d hoped to do in Louisville. She’ll have opportunities to do that at the American Classic in April or the U.S. Classic in May.

Long gone are the days when Winter Cup was a low-key men’s meet held in a Las Vegas hotel ballroom. This year marks the fourth edition to include women, and it’s become an increasingly important stop on the Olympic year calendar.

Just ask Jordan Chiles, who used the 2021 meet as a launching pad for her run to that year’s Tokyo Olympics.

Though Chiles withdrew from this week’s meet citing injury, and some of the other top women are also missing — including Simone Biles, Jade Carey and Shilese Jones, among others — that could open the door for gymnasts like Skye Blakely, Kayla DiCello, Kaliya Lincoln, Tiana Sumanasekera or Lexi Zeiss to start making their case that they belong on the five-person team for Paris.

A first-year senior almost always finds a way onto the U.S. Olympic women’s team, and Hezly Rivera, Jayla Hang and Simone Rose are among the top candidates for that this year. On the other end of the experience spectrum, the Winter Cup women’s field also includes the elite gymnastics return of 22-year-old Trinity Thomas, the former Florida Gators star who tied the NCAA record for perfect 10s last season.

Meanwhile, the men’s field includes several top Paris contenders, including Tokyo Olympians Malone, Yul Moldauer and Shane Wiskus, as well as 2021 pommel horse world champion Stephen Nedoroscik. Also in the lineup is the veteran Donnell Whittenburg, who is seeking his first Olympic berth after five world championships appearances.

Moldauer was part of the 2023 U.S. men’s team that finished third at the world championships, marking the first U.S. medal in that event in nine years. He’s the only team member competing in Louisville, however. Fred Richard and Paul Juda withdrew, while Asher Hong and Khoi Young  are competing this weekend at a world cup event in Germany.