Tokyo (AFP)

The Uzbèke Oksana Chusovitina is a phenomenon of longevity in a sport often dominated by teenage girls: at 46, she will be playing her eighth Olympic Games on Sunday in Tokyo and will improve her own record which makes her the oldest gymnast in the history of the Games.

“When I started gym, I never thought about playing the Games, it was just a sport that I loved. I am very proud of what I have achieved in this sport,” explained in margin of training in Tokyo Chusovitina who participated in her first Olympic Games in 1992 in Barcelona, ​​five years before the birth of the current gymnastics superstar, the American Simone Biles.

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"I love gymnastics. I say to myself: why not train and compete while I can still?", She declared in 2020 to AFP to explain her incredible longevity: "If I stopped, I think I would regret it bitterly ".

Born on June 19, 1975 in Bukhara, Chusovitina began her career in the USSR, but her first Games, in 1992, were held under the colors of the unified team of the former Soviet republics while the Soviet Union was in decomposition.

In Barcelona, ​​she won gold in the all-around team competition, but she still has to wait 16 years to win an individual Olympic medal, silver in vault, her specialty.

It was in 2008, in Beijing, under the colors of Germany, that she had joined in 2002 to allow her son Alisher to treat leukemia.

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The Tokyo Games will be its fifth for Uzbekistan, a country of 33 million inhabitants where its notoriety is so great that a stamp with its effigy has been issued.

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After the Tokyo Games, she promised, she will hang up, but she will stay in gymnastics, since she intends to open a gymnastics academy in Tashkent, to help the young generation to hatch.

"It feels good to be here, but this time for sure these are my last Games," she explained when she arrived in Tokyo.

Another of his goals is to continue the gym, but on stage this time, for "a theater show", in order to popularize his sport in Uzbekistan, where wrestling and boxing remain the most popular sports.

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"I want people to love gymnastics," she told AFP in 2020. "When people see how beautiful it is, they will rush to put their children in gym classes."

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