Olympians Sunisa Lee, Jade Carey, Grace McCallum, Jordan Chiles carry extra burden into NCAA championships

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Sunisa Lee arrived in Tokyo last summer relatively unknown. Then came the Olympics, the meet of her life, a gold medal she once thought unattainable and first-name-only status in her sport for life.

Her all-around title and the splash of fame that came with it did little to mess with her plans. She moved to Auburn to start her freshman year just a couple of weeks after coming back to the U.S. with three medals in her carry-on. Relaxed rules on name, image and likeness meant she didn’t have to choose between “Dancing With the Stars” and taking online classes while competing for the Tigers.

The now 19-year-old has done everything she has set her mind to, both on the mat and off. Her personal brand is booming and Auburn is in this week’s NCAA national championships for the first time since 2016, exactly as she hoped when she left Japan last summer.

Still, Lee and fellow Olympians Jade Carey (Oregon State), Grace McCallum (Utah) and Jordan Chiles (UCLA) will take the floor on Thursday with something the rest of the field does not: the weight of outsized expectations, the kind that comes with the territory after you’ve stood on an Olympic podium with the flag of your country being raised to the rafters.

“I think all the Olympians have that burden,” Auburn coach Jeff Graba said. “I think Suni has it maybe more than most just because the all-around gold medalist always has a little bit of an extra burden on them.”

Yet Graba is quick to point out that Olympic gymnastics and NCAA gymnastics are the same sport in spirit, but not necessarily in practice.

The skill level is different. The time commitment is different. The scoring is different. The team-first vibe is different. All of which can require an