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The phenomenal gymnast will perform at the Olympics at the age of 49. Oksana lit up for the USSR!
Oksana Chusovitina / Photo: © Jamie Squire / Staff / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru
The legendary Chusovitina won another gold medal. In Paris, the athlete can set a new unique record.
The return of Oksana Chusovitina to big sport came as a shock to few. It was not without reason that the famous gymnast competed at the highest level up to the age of 45: her whole life was spent in preparation for international tournaments!
So, after the Olympic Games in Tokyo, the athlete survived in “retirement” for only a couple of months. In the same autumn, she again declared herself at the World Cup, taking away several awards from young competitors. However, this, as it turned out, is not the limit for the gymnast.
Chusovitina is not going to stop and is already preparing for the next Olympics! Oksana is getting old at all?
“Now that’s it”?
Oksana Chusovitina announced her retirement from professional sports during the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Leaving the site after the next performance, the gymnast approached the cameras and said goodbye to the fans, barely holding back tears. The athlete could not get into the final stage of the tournament in the vault and decided that the time had finally come:
– Now it’s all. I will not return to this. I am already 46 years old! I have so many things to do, it’s time to catch up, – said Oksana.
However, life without sports adrenaline seems to have quickly become boring for an experienced athlete whose career began more than thirty years ago. In the international arena, Oksana, by the way, made her debut as part of the Soviet national team!
Since then, Chusovitina has changed sports citizenship several times: she held her first Olympics in 1992 in Barcelona under the flag of the unified team, where she became the champion in team all-around, then she played for Uzbekistan, Germany and again for Uzbekistan. At the same time, Oksana has gold medals in all major tournaments: the gymnast took gold at the Asian Games (Busan-2002), World Championships (Indianapolis-1991 and Anaheim-2003) and Europe (Clermont-Ferrand-2008).
The Games in Tokyo became the eighth in Chusovitina’s sports biography. Arriving in Japan, Oksana set a unique record: not a single gymnast has ever stayed on the Olympic platform for so long! At the same time, Oksana was introduced to the Artistic Gymnastics Hall of Fame – the first among active athletes.
“Well thought and decided”
However, already in the fall of last year, Oksana announced her return to professional sports. Chusovitina called her goal the victory at the upcoming Asian Games 2022, to prepare for which the athlete returned to participate in the World Cup. And then she showed that she still had something to say.
At the second stage of the tournament in Doha, the gymnast sensationally won gold in the vault, ahead of her competitors, who were fit for her mother. The age difference between Oksana and some of her rivals reached thirty years. At the next stages, the athlete strengthened her result: the second place in Cairo and the first in Baku eventually brought her the title of the winner of the series.
It is not surprising that the success at the World Cup inspired Chusovitina to new achievements. When the organizers of the Asian Games announced the postponement of the tournament due to the coronavirus outbreak in China, Oksana once again won the championship of Uzbekistan and made a powerful new statement. Now the key goal of the athlete will no longer be the modest Asian Games, but the next Olympic Games!
— I thought about it well and decided that after the Asian Games I would also prepare for the Paris 2024 Olympics! – the Olympic Committee of Uzbekistan quotes Chusovitin.
Is the world record just around the corner?
If Oksana really manages to break into Paris, this Olympics will be her ninth. This result will become a new – and almost unattainable – record among gymnasts. Chusovitina’s closest competitor in this ranking is Bulgarian Yordan Yovchev, who retired ten years ago.
Moreover, now Chusovitina can even encroach on the record for participation in the Olympics among representatives of all sports! To date, the gymnast is one of 14 athletes with eight Games in the asset, but she may soon get into an even more elite club. Only three athletes have gone through nine Olympics: the Austrian yachtsman Hubert Raudashl, the Latvian shooters Afanasy Kuzmin and the Georgian Nino Salukvadze – so far the only woman on this list. So far, only one athlete has reached the mark of ten tournaments – Canadian equestrian Ian Millar.
At the time of the Games in France, the legendary gymnast will already be … 49 years old! It seems that Oksana simply canceled aging. And therefore, at the ninth Olympics, it is quite possible that Chusovitina will not want to stop.
Source: Sportbox
I have been working as a sports journalist for about 6 years now. I currently work as an author at Sportish, which is a sports news website. I mainly cover sports news and I love writing about all aspects of the sport. I also have experience working as a broadcast journalist, so I have some great insights into how sport is reported and presented.