Suni Lee Owns Olympic TikTok Trend by Poking Fun at Her Fall During Balance Beam Final
Suni Lee ended up in sixth place overall during the women's balance beam final on Aug. 5
Sunisa "Suni" Lee shared a TikTok video that poked fun at her fall during the women's balance beam final at the Paris Olympic Games
Lee's post is a part of a TikTok trend in which athletes share the reason why they were not selected to take part in the 2024 Olympic Games
The gymnast jokingly wrote alongside the video “Unfortunately I was selected for the Olympics ❤️”
Although Sunisa “Suni” Lee missed out on gold during the women’s balance beam final at the Paris Olympic Games, social media users declared she won “internet gold” with her latest video.
In her TikTok video shared on Tuesday, Aug. 6, Lee posted the moment she fell during her balance beam final on Monday, Aug. 5, to join the viral trend in which people joke about why they didn’t make the 2024 Olympic team and share their sports mishaps.
Related: Simone Biles and Suni Lee Both Fall in Balance Beam Final, Finishing 5th and 6th
She wrote, “Unfortunately I was selected for the Olympics ❤️” in the video and included her falling in slow motion to a remixed version of "The Star Spangled Banner." The post was captioned, “😭🥲🥲.”
TikTok users flooded Lee’s comments with praise, with one user writing that she “won this trend 😭.” Gymnast Olivia Dunne — who also took part in the TikTok trend in early July — also commented “I can’t w u 😭😭😭” on Lee’s video.
Another TikTok user pointed out just “how painful this kind of fall is. The fact that you popped right up is QUEEN behavior.”
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Despite her fall off the balance beam, the 21-year-old gymnast earned a score of 13.100 and ended up in sixth place overall during the balance beam final. Lee's Team USA teammate Simone Biles also fell during her performance and earned a 13.100.
Italian gymnasts Alice D'Amato and Manila Esposito both made it on the podium — with D’Amato taking the gold and Esposito with the bronze. Chinese gymnast Yaqin Zhou ended up with the silver.
After the balance beam final, Lee told PEOPLE and other reporters that she was “disappointed” by her performance and that " I feel like I have so much more to prove on beam.”
“Every single time I get to the final, I can just never do the routine that I want to do, but that's just the mental side of it,” she continued. “So I just need to go and do the work and put all the effort in and maybe one day you'll have it."
Lee also added that she was “so tired and then I felt like I hadn't done beam in a while just because I can't keep track of my days while I've been here” and that “the pressure was definitely on today."
But even after her fall, Lee still earned a gold and two bronze medals at the Paris Games after she wasn’t sure if she would make it to the Olympics after she was diagnosed with a chronic kidney disease in 2023.
Lee told PEOPLE that the Paris Games has been her “redemption tour from the last Olympics” and that she is “trying to give myself grace for not being, I guess fully back to normal Suni."
"I think everything just means so much more because I didn't think that I would be here,” she continued. “And just knowing that I was able to overcome everything and never gave up was probably the most special moment, I guess for me, in winning all of those medals."
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