What to Know About Suni Lee’s New Uneven Bars Transfer

Sunisa Lee, the defending Olympic all-around gold medalist and uneven bars bronze medalist, might try a brand new ability on the 2024 Paris Video games.

The brand new component in her uneven bars routine is a launch transfer through which a gymnast does a entrance flip and a full twist within the structure place. Lee is searching for to be the primary girl ever to finish this transfer in worldwide competitors.

If she is ready to do it on the Video games, the ability — generally often called a full-twisting Jaeger — can be christened “The Lee,” the primary ability to be named after her within the sport’s Code of Factors. A handful of expertise are typically named every year, however solely a really small variety of gymnasts will ever earn the excellence of a namesake.

“The Lee” can be one of the crucial troublesome parts in girls’s uneven bars. Let’s take a better have a look at how she performs the transfer.

Every ability within the uneven bars occasion has a letter worth indicating issue, beginning with A and going by way of G, although Lee’s new ability has the potential to change into an H.

Jaegers, named for Bernd Jäger, consult with a household of strikes that include a 360-degree swing with a straight physique on the excessive bar and a launch right into a entrance flip earlier than catching the excessive bar once more. They are often straddled (D), piked (D) or laid out (F).

The structure Jaeger known as a Cappuccitti (named for Stephanie Cappuccitti) and isn’t tried in competitors due to the issue of catching the bar. Lee’s transfer additional will increase the issue by including a full twist.

What makes Lee’s transfer notably hanging is that she will not be making a variation on a unique launch ability referred to as a Tkatchev, the route adopted by most uneven bars innovators in recent times.

Within the unique model — named for the Soviet gymnast Aleksandr Tkatchev — the gymnast swings across the excessive bar with a straight physique, releases it close to the apex of the swing, flies backward over the bar with legs straddled, and rotates the higher physique ahead to catch the bar once more.

The swing could be carried out with 5 physique positions, the flight could be carried out with three physique positions, and it’s also potential to do a half-twist within the air. This implies there are not less than 30 permutations of the identical root ability.

Six new Tkatchev variants have been named within the final 4 years alone.

Whereas there are nonetheless some up for grabs, Lee selected to go a unique route. It has been 18 years since anybody innovated on the Jaeger base. The Chinese language gymnast Li Ya was the final, introducing a Jaeger with a half twist in 2006.

In January, Lee posted movies on Instagram exhibiting her doing the brand new ability throughout a coaching session. It was an indication that she was getting again in type after dealing with severe well being points for a lot of final 12 months.

Lee was recognized with an incurable kidney illness, which brought about extreme swelling in her face, arms and legs, making it unattainable to compete.

On her return to elite competitors, she tried the brand new ability on the Winter Cup in February however missed the component throughout her bars routine and fell.

Due to how troublesome and dangerous the ability is, it isn’t sure whether or not Lee will try it with a medal on the road. However the Olympics in Paris will provide an opportunity to have the transfer named after her and to go away an indelible mark on the game.