Oksana Chusovitina announced her desire to end her sports career. The record holder among gymnasts for the number of Olympic Games in which she took part, admitted that the 2020 competitions in Tokyo will be her last in her career.
“This will be my final Olympics, I will leave the big sport, I will not be an active athlete. I will help and do everything for the development of children's and youth sports in Uzbekistan ... I think that I will come to the Voronin Cup in Penza, because my friends are there. Every year I speak at these competitions, and I canceled the rest of the starts this season, ”admitted Tuss Chusovitina.
The career of a 44-year-old gymnast can be safely considered unique. When it comes to sports longevity, this discipline is unlikely to immediately come to mind. Intense training, strict regimen, tight schedule, high competition for a place in the team - all these representatives of this sport have to deal with from their youngest years, which makes their professional age extremely short. Hitting at least one Olympics is already considered an extremely high achievement, let alone a successful struggle for this right over several four-year cycles.
As for Chusovitina, for almost a 20-year period, she managed to play for the national teams of the USSR, Germany and Uzbekistan, become the champion of the Olympic Games in Barcelona and three-time winner of gold medals of world championships, thereby gaining respect and love of many fans around the planet and becoming an example to follow immediately for several generations.
However, the main achievement of a native of Bukhara is participation in seven Olympics in a row - from 1992 to 2016. At the moment, none of the gymnasts has managed to surpass this officially recorded record. Chusovitina herself will try to do this already in 2020, Tokyo. She has already taken the first and one of the most important steps on this path, having selected herself for the competitions following the results of the World Cup, which was held from October 4 to 13 in Stuttgart. Immediately after this, the athlete announced that she intends to speak at her eighth Olympic Games.
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My dear !!! Finally, I can officially inform you that I got to my 8th Olympiad💪💪💪. I want to say thank you all for your support and faith in me ве. We did it together🙏🙏🙏 @svetlanaboguinskaia @ lining.official @internationalgymcamp @discovergym
Publication by Oksana Chusovitina (@ oksana2016) 12 Oct 2019 at 2:50 PDT
However, the gymnast, who has repeatedly demonstrated strength of character not only in the gym, but also outside it, does not intend to go to Japan as a statistician. She told about this after the show of Alexei Nemov's "Legend of Sports", to participate in which she came to Moscow.
“I feel joy that I was selected, the World Cup was morally difficult. After I made a mistake on the second jump, my mood completely fell. But it was necessary to continue and qualify for the Olympics all-around. I'm glad that I did it. I’m not just wanting to participate, but preparing difficult jumps and, of course, going to Tokyo for a medal, ”TASS quoted Chusovitina as saying.
Oksana first became a member of the USSR national team in 1990. A year later, she was already at the top of the podium of the World Championships in Indianapolis, two years later she was holding in her hands the gold medal of the team championship at the Olympic Games in Barcelona. At that time, the Soviet Union had already ceased to exist, and the young athlete had to look for a new place for herself. The choice was made in favor of her native Uzbekistan, which she refused to leave, despite the entreaties of her relatives. The fact that there was no free space for her in the Russian team played a role.
As part of the new team, she performed three times at the Olympic Games - in Atlanta, Sydney and Athens, but she failed to repeat the success of 1992. Nevertheless, she took part in the championships of the planet and the Asian Games, regularly replenishing her collection with new prizes. Her crown discipline was the vault, in which for the first time in history she performed a backward somersault, bending, with a 360 ° rotation and a backward somersault, bending, with a 540 ° rotation.
In 2002, a drama happened in the fate of Chusovitina. Her three-year-old son Alisher was diagnosed with leukemia. It was not possible to remain in Uzbekistan, since local medicine at that time could not provide appropriate treatment. The gymnast, along with her husband, two-time winner of the Asian Games in Greco-Roman wrestling, Bahodir Kurbanov, moved to Germany, where the child had the opportunity to undergo a vital course of chemotherapy.
At that time, she had already been a member of a sports club in Cologne for several years, so the change of residence did not adversely affect her professional career. On the contrary, it became a new stage for her. The gymnast decided to change sports citizenship and play for the German national team. By her own admission, in this way she wanted to thank the country that gave her son a second chance.
At the time of the official transition to the Bundestim, Chusovitina was already over 30. Injuries began to worsen, there was talk that she would not withstand competition from younger gymnasts. However, all this only enraged the athlete. She never thought about the records, but still felt in herself the strength to continue this path.
And her perseverance paid off again in 2008, when the gymnast won silver in Beijing. Nevertheless, it was already not easy for her to count on the top places of major international competitions, and after the Olympic Games in London she announced that she planned to end her career and try herself in the coaching field. However, this did not happen.
In 2012, Chusovitina returned to the national team of Uzbekistan and expressed her intention to compete again for the Olympic medals in Rio de Janeiro. She failed to win a prize, but for the legendary athlete, the time for records of a different nature came. At the age of 41 and two months, she became the oldest gymnast in the history of the Olympics. In addition, not one of the representatives of her sport was able to qualify for seven Games in a row.
According to Chusovitina, Tokyo 2020 will be for her the last competition as an active athlete. However, she does not intend to leave gymnastics and expects to continue to help develop this sport in Uzbekistan.
“Now I like everything, it turns out. I’ll walk until the room is locked. In general, I have a dream - a medal for Uzbekistan at the Olympics. And I go to her. If I hadn’t tried, I would have regretted it very much. Therefore, I make efforts to realize the dream, the first step has been taken. And then - how it will turn out, ”the Sport Express gymnast quotes.
If Chusovitina goes to Tokyo, she will become the 11th athlete in history to account for a performance at eight Olympics. The record holder for this indicator is the representative of equestrian sports, Canadian Ian Miller, who has ten Games. The second place is shared between the Austrian yachtsman Hubert Raudashl and the Soviet-Latvian gunner Afanasy Kuzmin.