The Suni also rises: Simone Biles isn’t the best redemption story of the Olympics

At her lowest point Suni Lee wasn’t thinking about going back to the Olympics. Just getting out of bed in the morning was hard enough. After a year and a half of uncertainty and depression while battling a pair of career-threatening kidney ailments that led to a weight gain of 45lb on her 5ft frame and kept her out of the gym for months at a time, the Tokyo Olympic all-around champion was ready to call it quits.

For all of the attention devoted to Simone Biles’ extraordinary comeback over the past week, Lee’s return to the sport’s biggest stage has been even more improbable. On Thursday night, the 21-year-old from Minnesota won the bronze behind Biles’ gold and Rebeca Andrade’s silver in the one of the finest gymnastics meets ever staged, becoming the first Olympic all-around champion to win a medal at the next Summer Games since Nadia Comaneci in 1980.

Related: Biles is epitome of shift in gymnastics that prioritises autonomy over age

It wasn’t handed to her. Sitting at fifth in the overall standings through two rotations after a disappointing start on the vault, Lee failed to make up ground on a beam routine where she had mentally faded and needed something special to break into the medal mix on a day when the leaders were bringing their best. Known for her fluid, elegant routines on the uneven bars, Lee’s podium chances would come down to the floor exercise. That’s when Lee’s longtime coach, Jess Graba, kept it simple: “Win floor, and you’ll win [a bronze],” he said.

From the moment Lee completed her first tumbling pass, a goosebump inducing full-twisting double layout on which she stuck the landing perfectly, the ear-to-ear smile across her face said everything you needed to know. When her routine was finished and her score of 13.666 flashed on the screen, enough to leapfrog Italy’s Alice D’Amato and Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour and reach the podium by less than two-tenths of a point, Lee covered her mouth in astonishment before embracing the coach who never stopped believing.

“I feel like everything that I’ve done has paid off,” said Lee, who earned a gold medal on Tuesday alongside Biles in the team event. “I mean, literally, six months ago I didn’t even consider I would be here competing today. That was an achievement in itself. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to be on the podium. To just be here has been absolutely amazing. And I don’t know if you guys could tell, but I definitely got a little emotional after my floor routine. Just seeing the score come up was just insane.”

Two days after Biles shocked the world in Tokyo by withdrawing from the team final after suffering from “the twisties”, Lee captured the Olympic all-around gold and went from the unsung hero of the US squad to a Hmong American fairytale and an instant celebrity, appearing on late-night chatshows, attending the Met Gala and appearing on Dancing with the Stars. The door to opportunity seldom requires a picked lock, only the right combination.

But overnight fame wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. After enrolling at Auburn University, where she became the first Olympic women’s all-around champion to compete in college gymnastics and drew massive crowds to her meets, Lee grappled with the trappings of celebrity. Online trolls only amplified her impostor syndrome for winning the sport’s most cherished title in Biles’ absence. College was difficult and there were rumours some classmates behaved badly .

Her struggles only deepened in November 2022, not long after Lee announced she was leaving Auburn after the spring season to train for the Paris Olympics. She began to experience swelling around her ankles which led doctors to determine that her kidneys weren’t working properly. For her own safety, they told her, she might have to give up gymnastics entirely. After quitting training and moving home to Minnesota, the various treatments for the two incurable kidney diseases led to weight gain and exhaustion.

Lee spent five months out of the gym while her body retained more than 40lb of water at times. She couldn’t fit into her clothing and at times her eyes were swollen shut. After returning to training for two meets in 2023, where she reached the podium but performed far below her standard, she declined an invitation to a selection camp for the world championships. That, she said, was rock bottom. Less than a year from the Paris Olympics, Lee didn’t set foot in the gym for four straight months. “I was not doing a lot of anything good for me,” she said. “I was just kind of rotting in my bed and hoping that it would all go away.”

Then came January, when her doctors informed her that she had turned a corner in her recovery and would no longer need to come in for infusions as often. That allowed her to return to full-time training with the Olympics only seven months away. At last month’s US trials, having worked tirelessly to get her skills, stamina and mental edge back to where they were in Tokyo, she finished second in the all-around to book her place on the Olympic team. That it all happened in half a year is almost beyond belief.

Events came to a head on Thursday night, the first ever Olympic all-around final with two former champions in the field. After the final results were announced, Lee bounded on to the podium alongside Biles and the two celebrated, holding up either corner of an American flag.

Now Lee is a five-time Olympic medallist with a couple of event finals over the next few days to add to her ample career haul, starting with the balance beam on Sunday and the uneven bars on Monday. The self-doubt. The health scares. The public body shaming, including by a former teammate . All of it was left behind on a night when a bronze medal never felt more like a gold.

“Right now I’m just proud to be where I’m at and doing the things that I’m doing, because nobody really believed in me,” Lee said. “It’s about not giving up.”