Suni Lee spills the tea about her as-yet-unnamed bars skill — Frida Esparza debuts her guitar skills at UCLA’s pride meet

The gymternet is never a place fully without outrage, but it’s been a relatively quiet week overall. 

Suni Lee came through for us, though. She posted a TikTok this week captioned “Only the gymnastics fans will get this one.” 

In it, she discloses that although she wanted to travel to the Baku World Cup early last year to get the full-twisting Jaeger named for herself, she decided to play the long(er) game to make the Olympic team. 

ICYMI, in order to get a gymnastics skill named for you, you must be the first to successfully compete — and complete — the skill at a world championships, Olympics, or World Cup event. It also must be sufficiently difficult. Skills are ranked from A (the easiest) to J (Simone Biles’ triple-double on floor). A newly named skill must be at least a C.

Still, it seems the decision was a bit fraught:

Lee says she “begged” and offered to pay for her own travel to Baku, to no avail (I assume, from USA Gymnastics). If you recall, Lee competed at the Winter Cup shortly before Baku and struggled; fans were concerned that she wouldn’t be strong enough in time to make it to Paris. 

So the decision was made to shelve the Jaeger 1/1 and compete a less risky routine in the run-up to the Olympics. It worked, as we now know. But, there is no Lee on bars in Baku, and that’s a damn shame. Clearly, Lee agrees with all of us on that one. 

Other gym news:

Spencer Barnes at the Balance Beam Situation has your Week 7 NCAA schedule and links, and, of course, the GIFs. 

His live blog will be over at GymCastic behind a paywall this week. Barnes has explained on the podcast previously that chemo has caused neuropathy in his hands, making it painful for him to type. So for now, he’s doing a less frenetic version of the liveblog where viewers can contribute. Pretty cool. 

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College Gym News has, of course, the leo rankings. They’ve also got a judge’s examination of front pike half vaults and a feature on dedication leos. If you aren’t going to catch up with Spencer this weekend, CGN’s liveblogs (paywall free) should tide you over. 

Levi Jung-Ruivivar posted an update about her treatment for an eating disorder. “Guys, it’s going well,” she says. We wish her the best! 

Five at The IX: Frida Esparza, Electric Guitarist (and UCLA Bruin) 

In advance of UCLA’s pride meet against Penn State, which will have taken place at press time, Frida Esparza announced to media, very casually, that she would be playing the national anthem on the electric guitar before the meet. 

Haley Sawyer, a reporter for the Southern California News Group, posted Esparza’s remarks to TikTok. 

This is not only so exciting, but also a real celebration of what makes this team stand out in terms of celebrating the individuality of its gymnasts. 

Esparza did her own video to amp up her fans as well. 

If you attended or watched the meet, what did you think?