Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour uneven bars gold. Suni Lee the bronze. : NPR

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PARIS — The U.S. gymnast Suni Lee has won the bronze medal in the Olympic uneven bars final, her third medal of the 2024 Games and a remarkable cap to her return to gymnastics after a sudden onset of kidney disease last year had threatened to end her career.

In Sunday’s competition at Bercy Arena in Paris, Lee finished behind the talented 17-year-old Kaylia Nemour of Algeria, whose score of 15.7 won her the gold. Qiu Qiyuan, also 17, of China scored 15.5 to win silver.

For Nemour who was born and raised in France, the gold is extra meaningful. She began representing Algeria last year after the French Gymnastics Federation did not clear her to resume competition following knee surgery in 2021. This title is a first for Algeria and any African gymnast at the Olympic Games.

Uneven bars are Lee’s strongest event. Her score of 14.8 was her second-highest score on the bars in this Olympics, just behind her tally in the individual all-around event, in which she also won bronze.

The 21-year-old Lee performed last. After seeing her competitors’ high scores, she chose not to add difficulty to the routines she’d performed last week, which could have given her a chance at a gold or silver. After landing her routine, she said she was thrilled.

“It feels amazing to have it over with, honestly. I was so nervous watching everyone,” Lee said afterward. “I got to watch everyone and it put the pressure on me a little bit. But I’m really happy that it did, because I feel like I did everything that I came to do.”

After winning a surprise gold medal in the individual all-around at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Lee had set her focus on returning to the Olympics here in Paris.

But those plans seemed to be derailed early last year, when two serious kidney conditions forced her to retire early from her college gymnastics career. The illness caused rapid weight gain and swelling so intense that she found it difficult to bend her joints or grip the uneven bars. Her doctors were, at first, stumped about the cause. At times, she believed she would never compete again.

“I’m so, so glad that I never gave up, because there were so many times where I thought about quitting and walking away from the sport because I didn’t think that I would ever get to this point,” she said in June after qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team.

Sunday’s bronze is Lee’s third and final medal of the 2024 Games after she won bronze in the individual all-around final and helped the U.S. win a gold in the team event.

“She had everything to lose coming back. There was nothing really for her to prove — except for to herself,” her coach Jess Graba said Sunday.