The Move That May Take Sunisa Lee’s Name

Sunisa Lee, the defending Olympic all-around gold medalist and uneven bars bronze medalist, may attempt a new skill at the 2024 Paris Games.

The new element in her uneven bars routine is a release move in which a gymnast does a front flip and a full twist in the layout position. Lee is seeking to be the first woman ever to complete this move in international competition.

If she is able to do it at the Games, the skill — commonly known as a full-twisting Jaeger — would be christened “The Lee,” the first skill to be named after her in the sport’s Code of Points. A handful of skills tend to be named each year, but only a very small number of gymnasts will ever earn the distinction of a namesake.

“The Lee” would be one of the most difficult elements in women’s uneven bars. Let’s take a closer look at how she performs the move.

Each skill in the uneven bars event has a letter value indicating difficulty, starting with A and going through G, though Lee’s new skill has the potential to become an H.

Jaegers, named for Bernd Jäger, refer to a family of moves that consist of a 360-degree swing with a straight body on the high bar and a release into a front flip before catching the high bar again. They can be straddled (D), piked (D) or laid out (F).

The layout Jaeger is called a Cappuccitti (named for Stephanie Cappuccitti) and is rarely attempted in competition because of the difficulty of catching the bar. Lee’s move further increases the difficulty by adding a full twist.

What makes Lee’s move particularly striking is that she is not creating a variation on a different release skill called a Tkatchev, the route followed by most uneven bars innovators in recent years.

In the original version — named for the Soviet gymnast Aleksandr Tkatchev — the gymnast swings around the high bar with a straight body, releases it near the apex of the swing, flies backward over the bar with legs straddled, and rotates the upper body forward to catch the bar again.

The swing can be performed with five body positions, the flight can be performed with three body positions, and it is also possible to do a half-twist in the air. This means there are at least 30 permutations of the same root skill.

Six new Tkatchev variants have been named in the last four years alone.

While there are still some up for grabs, Lee chose to go a different route. It has been 18 years since anyone innovated on the Jaeger base. The Chinese gymnast Li Ya was the last, introducing a Jaeger with a half twist in 2006.

In January, Lee posted videos on Instagram showing her doing the new skill during a training session. It was a sign that she was getting back in form after facing serious health issues for much of last year.

Lee was diagnosed with an incurable kidney disease, which caused severe swelling in her face, hands and legs, making it impossible to compete.

On her return to elite competition, she attempted the new skill at the Winter Cup in February but missed the element during her bars routine and fell.

Because of how difficult and risky the skill is, it is not certain whether Lee will attempt it with a medal on the line. But the Olympics in Paris will offer a chance to have the move named after her and to leave an indelible mark on the sport.