MINNEAPOLIS — Already home to the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx, the Target Center will soon play host to a generation of Olympic hopefuls.
Tuesday, Minnesota Sports and Events announced that Minneapolis will host the upcoming U.S. Olympic team gymnastics trials ahead of the 2024 summer games in Paris.
Ahead of the trials on June 27-30, the Minneapolis Convention Center will first host the USA Gymnastics Championships starting June 22, including rhythmic gymnastics, acrobatic gymnastics, and trampoline & tumbling; the USAG National Congress and Trade Show; and the USA Gymnastics for All National Championships & Gymfest.
Following the team trials at Target Center, USA Gymnastics will announce its 2024 Olympic team for artistic gymnasts in front of a live audience at the Target Center. Rhythmic and trampoline teams will be announced at the conclusion of the USA Gymnastics Championships.
As the final stop on the road to the Paris Games, MNSE said the city will take on the title of Gymnastics City USA 2024 for the duration of the trials.
For one of the most famous names in gymnastics, the upcoming Olympic trials will be a homecoming. St. Paul native and three-time Olympic medalist Suni Lee has said she's working toward a spot on the 2024 Olympic team. In Nov. 2022, Lee announced that she planned to leave Auburn University gymnastics at the end of the season to focus on training for Paris 2024.
"As an athlete that has competed at that highest level on the world's biggest stage, I have been fortunate enough to experience the once-in-a-lifetime feeling, and the indescribable emotion when a gold medal is draped around your neck. But I don't want it to be just once in a lifetime," Lee said in a video posted on Twitter.
In April, Lee shared that she was being treated for a kidney issue and could not compete in her final college meets.
But it appears that Lee, who was named one of TIME's Most Influential People of 2021, Sports Illustrated's 2021 Female Athlete of the Year and the Women's Sports Foundation's Individual Sportswoman of the Year for 2022, is getting back into the literal swing of things.
In a video posted to her Instagram story on Monday, Lee was in the gym practicing on the uneven bars, the clip captioned "work work."
"Watching the Olympians who came before me was such an inspiration when I was growing up, and it means so much to know that the young athletes in Minnesota will have a chance to get inspired by the best gymnasts in America," Lee said during the event announcement.
And Lee isn't the only Olympic gymnast with Minnesota ties. Isanti-native Grace McCallum won a silver medal with the U.S. Women's Team in Tokyo, and Shane Wiskus, from Waconia, competed on the U.S. Men's Team, also in Tokyo. They ended with a fifth-place finish in the 2020 games.
The MNSE, the regional sports commission for the Twin Cities and Bloomington, helped bring the NHL Winter Classic, MLS All-Star Game and NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four to the region in 2022. Already this year, the MNSE hosted the 2023 Big Ten Women's Basketball Championship.
Other major sporting events coming to Minneapolis and St. Paul in the coming years include:
- 2024 Big Ten Men's and Women's Basketball Championships
- 2024 NCAA Men's Ice Hockey Frozen Four
- 2025 NCAA Women's Ice Hockey Frozen Four
- 2026 Special Olympics USA Games
Shortly after the announcement, Target Center tweeted that tickets are already available for purchase.
This is a developing story. KARE 11 will provide more details as new information becomes available.
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