Suni Lee he did it again.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics gold medalist in all-around gymnastics delighted fans this week with another spectacular training clip. This time, 19-year-old Lee shows how she performs a new jump: a round, a half turn on the table, followed by a forward flip with one and a half turns. The vault is named after the Russian Olympic gold medalist Svetlana Khorkina.
“In my learning how to leapfrog an era,” Lee later said in a tweet with a quote from the original film.
The element has a difficulty rating of 4.8, about 0.2 less than the double-twisted Yurchenko Lee who competed in Tokyo. However, if Lee were able to straighten her body to the shape of the system, the vault would score 5.6 D.
Lee is currently in his second year at Auburn University. She said in November that this would be her college final before returning to full-time elite training with a view to defending her gold medal in Paris 2024.
“I am so excited to share that I will be returning to elite gymnastics after this season. I’m focused on Paris 2024 and I know what I need to do to get there,” Lee said in a video posted on her social media channels.
• Olympic champion Sunisa Lee confirms Paris 2024 ambitions: ‘I know what I have to do to get there’
Oklahoma, Florida and Michigan top the NCAA women’s rankings for week two
Speaking of Lee, he is ranked 5th in the NCAA rankings as he enters the third week of competition.
2022 World Team Gold Medalist Leanna Wong leads the table, ahead of the defending all-around champion Trinity Thomas. A Tokyo Olympian and Wong’s world mate Jordan Chiles is third.
In the team rankings, Oklahoma is ranked number one after its second week, with Florida in second place and 2021 champion Michigan in third place.
This weekend’s playoffs feature several big matchups, including Friday’s (January 20) doubles match between Florida and No. 11 Alabama.
On Saturday (January 21), UCLA No. 4 heads to the University of Washington, and the weekend concludes on Sunday (Jan. 22) when Michigan takes on Michigan State and Oklahoma hosts No. 5 Utah.
For the full competition schedule, please visit the website Balance situation.
• Jordan Chiles uses “tyrannical bots” to achieve success
ICYMI: Nastia Liukin recalls her time in “Special Forces”
2008 Olympic gold medalist Nastya Liukin spoke to Olympics.com in an exclusive interview last week about her experience with the reality show “Special Forces”.
She says the experience was about breaking out of her daily routine. The show featured 16 celebrities, including another Olympic champion Carly Lloyd and silver medalist Gus Kenworthy into the Jordanian desert for military-like training.
“I think in general I was just trying to keep telling myself that it would be fine if I just wasn’t in full control,” Liukin said. “So much of my life is a schedule, very black and white. The thing that was probably one of the hardest things about the program was not being prepared, and also not being prepared but not knowing how to prepare.
Read the full article by clicking here.
From the vault…
This week we look back Henrietta Onodi at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Onodi, who had won court gold and silver in Barcelona in 1992 four years earlier, returned to competition after a break in 1995 before heading to Atlanta. Her Hungarian team placed ninth and Onodi got the highest score for her optional jump, 9.525.
