Floor Music Corner: Sunisa Lee’s gracefully powerful signature style
Sunisa Lee’s floor routines are always a highlight for fans. Her impeccable flexibility, artistry, and tumbling are state of the art. After all, they clinched her the all-around gold three years ago in Tokyo.
One element that helps elevate her floor routines to an elite level is her musicality – a quality previously sought after but more valued than ever in this Code of Points.
Lee’s selections of music since the beginning of her senior elite career have consisted of contemporary classical pieces that take you on an emotional journey, sticking with you long after she’s left the podium.
Let’s take a look at the evolution of Suni’s floor music since she entered the senior ranks in 2019.
2019
As a first-year senior in 2019, Lee saw immediate national and international success. She gained notoriety as a floor worker when she won silver on the event at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. Here, she used the song “Pirates, Thugs, and Bandits” by The Flight. This Arabian-esque song comes off the soundtrack for the video game “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.” The 11th game in the popular series was released a year prior to Lee’s senior debut. This selection struck a balance between being powerful and fierce, yet still balletic.
2021
After the delay of the Tokyo Olympics, Suni debuted a new floor routine at the 2021 U.S. Gymnastics Championships in her first all-around showing since the last world championships. The music selection was another modern-sounding classical piece. The song was “Underground,” by the popular American electric-violinist Lindsey Stirling from her 2019 album “Artemis”. Stirling’s songs have been popular floor music choices for years. Just a few examples include Elsa Garcia (Mexico, 2012-2014, “Zelda Medly”), Georgia-Mae Fenton (Great Britain, 2019, Mirage), and Lee’s close friend Kayla DiCello (USA), who used the title track from “Artemis” in 2022. It was with this routine to “Underground” that Lee won both her Olympic all-around title and, subsequently, international fame.
2022
After becoming an Olympic champion, Lee’s career took some twists and turns. She competed for two seasons in the NCAA with the Auburn Tigers, becoming the first Olympic all-around champion to compete in college and winning a national title on beam in 2022. Here, she competed a routine a little different than her usual style to the song “Battle Royale (Haters Instrumental VIP)” by Apashe. Leaning into the NCAA style, it had a more dubstep-style composition with high-powered bass.
Lee announced her intentions to leave Auburn after her sophomore season in 2023 and pursue a second Olympic Games, but her collegiate career ended even earlier than expected when she began to have health issues that would later be revealed as two types of kidney disease.
2024
It wasn’t until the 2024 U.S. Classic that Lee started competing floor again. Her floor music for the classic and U.S. championships came off the same “Assassin’s Creed” soundtrack as her 2019 routine. This time it was to the song “A Spartan Fight,” and boasting a similar vibe as 2019 – Middle Eastern style instrumentation over an intense and explorative melody.
Lee changed her routine for Olympic Trials, where she returned to the music of Lindsey Sterling. This time from her brand new album “Duality,” with the song “Eye of the Untold Her.” Lee wasn’t quite ready to debut the new floor routine at the classic, but she was expected to debut a new routine that hearkened back to her first Olympic Games.
If Lee continues competing after Paris, it will be interesting to see if she continues this pattern, as both The Flight and Lindsey Stirling have helped give her such a recognizable and pleasant signature style.
