Olympic Champion Suni Lee Brings Unhygienic Complaints Around Gymnastics to the Surface

But she eventually regained her strength and, soon after she began training again in late 2023 and went to qualify for trials in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where she helped Team USA win gold in the women’s team event.

Now, Suni Lee is in better health and continuing her return carefully. She also showed a lighter side when she added about foam, “Sometimes when I get tired, I just like to come and sit in my foam pit and maybe take a nap, just chill, throw the blocks around, throw them at people. If you make me mad, I just might flip out. And I do mean that literally.”

While hygiene is often discussed in NCAA gymnastics, especially around shared training spaces like foam pits, this is not the only issue that athletes face in training facilities.

Major issues Brown gymnasts faced in the training facilities

In 2022, Brown University women’s gymnastics team members spoke about how their training environment impacted their performance and safety. The team practises on the second floor of the Pizzitola Sports Center, but doesn’t have access to foam pits or Resi-Pit mats. As a result, they were forced to travel off campus multiple times per week.

One athlete, Asta Farrell, explained how time affected her training and eating habits. She sometimes had to train “on an empty stomach” because of the early sessions.

But the biggest issue for the athletes was the lack of soft landings for skills. A lack of foam pits or other soft surfaces meant gymnasts were practising high-level skills on a harder surface. Abby Walsh, who is also a gymnast there, said that this caused more stress on the body. “We’re doing very, very high level skills,” she said. “If a gymnast makes a mistake on a regular, harder landing mat, it’s unforgiving and risks injury.”

The team also pointed out about having limited space for training. Walsh said the training room was “super cramped” and athletes had to wait or avoid training at the same time. “There’s 23 of us, so where do we go? Where are we supposed to stand?” she said. “We’re always going to be in someone’s way.”

The absence of mats also led to increased injury risk. Farrell spoke about a severe injury she suffered in bar practice, explaining that when she landed badly on her back after a release skill and ended up injured. She said if the gym were equipped with more mats, she could have used them to cushion her fall. “But at Brown’s practice facility, we don’t have any space… we also don’t have that many mats,” she said. “Even if we did have mats, there’s nowhere to put them anyway.”

Overall, the athletes described a system where equipment and space limitations shaped everything from training routines to injury recovery. As Walsh summed it up, “We cannot live up to our full potential in the facility that we’re in now.”

The post Olympic Champion Suni Lee Brings Unhygienic Complaints Around Gymnastics to the Surface appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.