Five days ago, Suni Lee was sitting courtside at the NBA Finals watching OG Anunoby tip in a game-winner for the New York Knicks, and her reaction — pure, unscripted shock and joy — circulated to every major sports and pop culture account within hours. Complex posted it. NBA on Prime posted it. The clip hit 47,000 likes before most people had finished breakfast.
This is where Suni Lee lives now: at the intersection of elite athletics, viral culture, and high fashion, equally at home on a gymnastics mat and a Victoria’s Secret runway. She is 23 years old, holds 6 Olympic medals across two Games, walked the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in October 2025 alongside Angel Reese, and is currently partnered with Coach, Phlur, Listerine, and Victoria’s Secret PINK. Her TikTok has 3.8 million followers and 115.8 million likes. She was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases in 2023, spent six months unable to train, and still made it to the Paris 2024 Olympics podium.
Her full name is Sunisa Phabsomphou Lee, born March 9, 2003, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the first Hmong-American Olympian in history. Her father was paralyzed in a fall from a ladder ten days before her first senior US Championships. She has never, across any of it, appeared to be anything other than exactly herself.
The Family Story Behind the Gold Medal
Suni’s mother, Yeev Thoj, is a Hmong refugee who immigrated to the United States from Laos as a child. Her mother’s longtime partner, John Lee, raised Suni from age two — she considers him her father and uses his last name. He works as a healthcare worker alongside Yeev. Suni has five siblings total: three half-siblings and two step-siblings, including her sister Evionn, who also competed in artistic gymnastics.
The family didn’t have money for proper gymnastics equipment when Suni was young. John Lee built her a balance beam in the backyard using spare wood and a mattress. That beam is now one of the most retold details in American gymnastics — not because it’s remarkable as engineering, but because of what it represents: a family that figured out a way to support a daughter’s talent when the standard path wasn’t accessible.
In 2019, ten days before Suni competed at her first senior US Championships, John fell from a ladder and was left paralyzed from the chest down. She competed anyway. She won. The moment became a defining image of what she was made of before most of the country knew her name.
She carries her Hmong-American heritage publicly and deliberately. As Team USA’s own account has noted, she is the first Hmong-American Olympian in history — a milestone that matters enormously to a community that has had limited representation in elite American athletics. In 2022, that same identity placed her in a painful situation when she received racist backlash from within the Hmong-American community regarding her then-relationship with USC football player Jaylin Smith. She addressed it publicly, directly, and moved on.
Tokyo 2020: The First Asian American All-Around Champion
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, were the moment the broader public met Suni Lee. Simone Biles had withdrawn from the all-around final due to a medical issue. The competition was suddenly open in a way nobody had anticipated. And Suni Lee, 18 years old, competing in her first Olympics, won the all-around gold.
She became the first Asian American woman to win the Olympic gymnastics all-around title. She also won Team Silver and Uneven Bars Bronze, finishing Tokyo with three medals.
Her performance on the uneven bars — the apparatus she is most associated with, where her combination of difficulty and execution is considered technically unmatched — drew the kind of commentary that typically waits until careers are over. She was being called generational while still a teenager.
The Auburn Years and the NCAA Chapter Most Fans Forget
Rather than immediately entering the professional circuit, Suni enrolled at Auburn University, where she competed in NCAA gymnastics. She drew sold-out crowds across the SEC in a way that college gymnastics programs had not historically experienced. She won an NCAA national title on the balance beam and was one of the highest-earning female athletes in the entire NIL landscape — this being 2022 and 2023, when the NIL era was still new enough that her commercial value at the college level was genuinely unusual.
The Auburn chapter ended earlier than planned. In early 2023, she woke up with her entire body severely swollen. She was experiencing chronic nausea, lightheadedness, and symptoms that multiple doctors couldn’t explain. She eventually went to the Mayo Clinic, where she was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases in March 2023. One of them is incurable.
She stepped away from Auburn, stepped away from gymnastics, and spent six months in treatment.
The Kidney Diagnosis: What She Has Shared and What She Hasn’t
This is the question that generates the most confused and often medically inaccurate search results about her, so here is what is actually known.
In March 2023, Suni Lee was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases. She has deliberately chosen not to publicly name the specific conditions to protect her medical privacy — a decision that is entirely hers to make, regardless of how many TikTok threads speculate otherwise.
What she has shared: the illness came on suddenly, the swelling was severe and whole-body, multiple doctors missed it before the Mayo Clinic identified it, one of the conditions is incurable, and she managed it well enough to be cleared to compete in Paris by April 2024.
She is currently partnered with the American Kidney Fund to raise awareness about kidney disease and has spoken publicly about the experience of navigating a serious chronic illness as a young elite athlete. Her Instagram bio explicitly references “the kidney community” — an audience she has made it her mission to reach and represent.
At the 2025 ESPY Awards, she won Best Comeback Athlete. The recognition was specifically for her return to the Olympic podium after a diagnosis that had genuinely threatened her career.
Paris 2024 and the Golden Girls
By April 2024, her condition was in remission. By August 2024, she was in Paris.
She competed as part of the US women’s gymnastics team — nicknamed the “Golden Girls” — that won Team Gold. She also won All-Around Bronze and another Uneven Bars Bronze, giving her a Paris medal count of 1 Gold and 2 Bronze.
| Games | Year | Medals |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo | 2021 | Gold (all-around), Silver (team), Bronze (uneven bars) |
| Paris | 2024 | Gold (team), Bronze (all-around), Bronze (uneven bars) |
| Total | 2 Gold, 1 Silver, 3 Bronze |
Winning an Olympic medal of any color at a second Games would have been a sufficient story for someone who spent the intervening year in kidney disease treatment. She won three.
The Victoria’s Secret Runway, Coach, and the Fashion Pivot
In October 2025, Suni Lee walked the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show — one of the first professional athletes to do so, alongside WNBA star Angel Reese. She modeled for the PINK line in a sporty-glam look: a hoodie, micro-shorts, and the kind of confidence that doesn’t need explaining. The moment landed on every major fashion account and cemented something that her social media presence had been building toward for two years: she is not just an athlete with brand deals. She is a fashion figure in her own right.
Her primary fashion partner is Coach, whose campaigns she headlines and whose New York Fashion Week shows she attends as a front-row presence. She is the face of fragrance brand Phlur — “My scent changes with every moment and chapter of who I’m becoming,” she posted two weeks ago, which is the kind of copy that sounds like PR until you know enough about her story to understand why it lands differently. She holds ongoing partnerships with Listerine (a Listerine TikTok generated 6.9 million views last month), Victoria’s Secret PINK, and has previously worked with Amazon and Target.
At Auburn, she was one of the highest-earning NIL athletes in the country. Post-Paris, with fashion and beauty deals layered on top of her athletic profile, her estimated net worth sits between $3 million and $5 million — almost certainly a conservative figure given the trajectory of her commercial partnerships.
Suni Lee and OG Anunoby: What’s Actually True
The question “Is Suni Lee in a relationship?” keeps returning to OG Anunoby because the algorithm keeps serving the connection, so here is what’s actually documented.
OG Anunoby is a forward for the New York Knicks. Suni has been frequently seen at Knicks playoff games, and the timing of her attendance with his exceptional performances became a running joke online — one that her own TikTok content leaned into playfully. Knicks fans were, briefly, begging her to give him a chance.
She addressed it directly in a 2025 interview. They are friends. She is close with multiple Knicks players, including Karl-Anthony Towns, and she genuinely enjoys basketball. The courtside appearances were not a romantic story. They were a person who likes basketball, watching basketball.
As of June 2026, Suni Lee is single. The baby rumors circulating in search results are false, driven by clickbait content rather than anything she has said or done.
The Racist Attack She Didn’t Have to Talk About But Did
In November 2021, while she was in Los Angeles filming Dancing with the Stars, Suni Lee was pepper-sprayed by individuals who shouted anti-Asian slurs at her from a passing car. She was with friends. The attack was unprovoked.
She spoke about it publicly. She did not have to — she was a 22-year-old Olympic gold medalist who could have absorbed the experience privately and said nothing. She chose to speak, in a moment when anti-Asian hate crimes were still underreported and frequently dismissed. The gymnastics community and broader public responded with support. She moved forward.
This is, if you pay attention, a pattern. The father’s paralysis. The kidney diagnosis. The racist attack. The community backlash over her relationship. She encounters difficult things, processes them publicly when she chooses to, and continues.
Suni Lee in 2026
She is not currently competing in elite gymnastics. She is managing her health, building her brand, attending NBA Finals games courtside, posting TikToks that pull millions of views, and working with the American Kidney Fund on the kind of advocacy that takes up real time and energy.
She has not said she is done with gymnastics. She has said she is taking a break. For an athlete whose career has already featured a trajectory that defies easy prediction — Olympic gold at 18, NCAA champion, near-career-ending diagnosis, comeback to the Paris podium at 21 — projecting what she does next feels like a fool’s errand.
What seems clear is that the version of Suni Lee that exists in 2026 is more expansive than the one that stood on the Tokyo podium in 2021. The gymnastics was always exceptional. The person has grown around it into something harder to categorize and considerably more interesting.
Like Ilona Maher, who built a cultural following that now extends well beyond rugby, or Alix Earle, whose authenticity drives the kind of audience loyalty that brand deals alone can’t manufacture, Suni Lee has figured out how to exist in multiple registers simultaneously without losing coherence. She is still the girl from Saint Paul whose dad built her a beam in the backyard. She is also the woman who walked the Victoria’s Secret runway and made it look obvious.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Suni Lee in a relationship?
As of June 2026, Suni Lee is single. Rumors linking her to New York Knicks player OG Anunoby circulated after she was frequently seen at Knicks playoff games, but she addressed the speculation directly in a 2025 interview, clarifying that they are friends. She is close with several Knicks players and enjoys following basketball.
What was Suni Lee diagnosed with?
In March 2023, Suni Lee was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases after experiencing sudden whole-body swelling, nausea, and fatigue that multiple doctors initially struggled to diagnose. She was eventually treated at the Mayo Clinic. Lee has chosen not to publicly identify the specific conditions to protect her medical privacy, although she has shared that one of them is incurable. Her condition entered remission by April 2024, allowing her to compete at the Paris Olympics. She also works with the American Kidney Fund to raise awareness about kidney disease.
What happened to Suni Lee’s dad?
In 2019, just ten days before Suni’s first senior U.S. Championships, her father, John Lee, suffered a serious fall from a ladder that left him paralyzed from the chest down. The event became a major part of her story as she continued competing during a difficult period for her family. Earlier in her childhood, John had built her a homemade balance beam in their backyard when the family could not afford gymnastics equipment, a story that gained widespread attention during the Tokyo Olympics.
Is Suni Lee Hmong?
Yes. Suni Lee is Hmong-American. Her mother, Yeev Thoj, is a Hmong refugee who immigrated to the United States from Laos as a child. Lee became the first Hmong-American Olympian in history and has spoken proudly about representing the Hmong community on the world stage.
Did Suni Lee have a baby?
No. Suni Lee does not have any children. Claims suggesting otherwise are false and typically originate from misleading or clickbait content.
How tall is Suni Lee?
Suni Lee is approximately 5 feet 1 inch (155 cm) tall. Her height is typical for elite artistic gymnasts, where a compact build can be advantageous for strength, balance, and aerial skills. She is especially known for her world-class uneven bars routines, which require exceptional upper-body strength and technical precision.