Suni Lee has been training the full-twisting Jaeger for two years, but she’ll have to wait a little longer to get the new skill named after her in the Code of Points.
Lee was not on the list of athletes given international assignments for the spring by USA Gymnastics on Tuesday.
She had made her desire to compete at the Baku World Cup clear in recent weeks, wanting to go to Azerbaijan, compete a watered down routine centered around the skill, get it named, and check it off the list so she could shift her focus to the Olympics. But Lee fell on the skill during Saturday’s senior women’s competition at Winter Cup, after successfully executing it in every other attempt while in Louisville (like training and warmups) and throwing into question whether the selection committee would opt to send her to Baku after all.
“Personally, I feel like they should [send her to Baku],” Lee’s coach Jess Graba said after the meet Saturday. “She proved herself, that it’s ready to go. She needs to compete it.”
Lee said she would be mad about the fall “for a really long time,” but it’s better it happened during a small domestic meet rather than when it mattered on an international assignment or at the Olympics.
To get the skill, which has never been successfully competed by a woman, named after her in the Code of Points (the rulebook for elite gymnastics), Lee would have to compete it without major fault at an international, FIG-sanctioned meet like a World Cup,…
