Summer Olympic Games

On the eve of the Summer Olympic Games, I would like to talk about the most outstanding athletes who, for several decades, have continued to change and improve their sport discipline. Imagine, you are forty-eight years old, and behind you you have not only five dozen years of living, but also as many as eight Olympics. This is precisely the characteristic that can be used to describe the legend of world sports, Oksana Chusovitina. Oksana Chusovitina is the 1992 Olympic champion, three-time world champion, nine-time world championship medalist in the vault, European champion, Asian Games champion – in a word, a real legend of artistic gymnastics, who was able to transform and destroy beliefs about the longevity of an athlete’s career. So, her career has been going on for more than 30 years. A native of Uzbekistan is included in the Guinness Book of Records as the only gymnast in the world who has participated in the Olympic Games eight times.
At the last Olympics in Tokyo, Chusovitina announced her retirement. But two months passed, and the titled athlete changed her mind and decided to return to the sport to win the Asian Games and is preparing for her ninth Games. She managed to cope with the first title, soon we will see what happens in the second case.
The sports biography of Oksana Chusovitina dates back to 1991, when 16-year-old Oksana Chusovitina managed to successfully pass the difficult selection for the Soviet Union national team and immediately won two gold and one silver medal at the World Championships in Indianapolis.
In 1992, the first Olympics in a long series took place for Chusovitina, which was held in Barcelona and where she managed to win gold medals in the team championship.
However, compared to the previous Olympics, the difficult preparation for periodic training affected Chusovitina’s results at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, where the young athlete failed to reach the final even in her signature vault.
Time is approaching the third Olympics in 2000, when Oksana went to Sydney to continue to conquer the heights of artistic gymnastics, but even there she failed to enter the top three. So, having suffered another defeat, she decided to pause her career for a while, because after some time Chusovitina and her husband Bakha Kurbanov had real happiness: their son Alisher was born.
But just believe me, just four months after the birth of her son, Oksana again began competing in international competitions, now for the Uzbekistan national team, and her results clearly and much improved. In 2001, she managed to become a silver medalist in the vault at the World Championships held in Ghent.
The year 2002 was also successful for Chusovitina’s artistic gymnastics career, as the girl performed excellently at the Asian Games in Busan and won two gold and two silver medals, once again adding to her already full treasury of achievements. However, not everything was as smooth as it might seem; something terrible happened in Oksana’s personal life: her son was diagnosed with leukemia. Thus, expensive treatment had to be started immediately, because otherwise the doctors would give the child no more than a month.
Fortunately, everything worked out: salvation was found in German medicine, it was they who sponsored and were able to cure the son of the titled athlete, and therefore by 2006 Germany invited Chusovitina to compete for the German team at international competitions, as a result of which the athlete agreed and, thanking the country, won a bronze medal at the World Championships in Aarhus.
Meanwhile, two more Summer Olympics passed, at which Oksana managed to show outstanding results and now, already thirty-three years old, at her fifth Olympics in Beijing, Chusovitina became a silver medalist in the vault.
Further, in 2012, at her sixth Olympics in London, Chusovitina continued to compete for the German national team, but did not make any mark at the competitions themselves, and therefore, after the 2012 Olympic Games, Oksana returned to Uzbekistan and began to dream of a seventh, a record for artistic gymnastics, Olympics.
Oksana Chusovitina walked confidently: she qualified for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and again competed for the Uzbekistan national team, taking the final seventh place in the vault.
In 2018, the 42-year-old athlete won several World Cup medals and a silver medal at the Asian Games. She also suggested that she might compete at the Olympics in Japan.
At her last, record-breaking not only for the world of artistic gymnastics, but also an impressive Olympics for the entire sport, Oksana Chusovitina competed at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 in the vault. However, the legend of artistic gymnastics was unable to make it to the finals of the competition and this Olympics did not become so successful for the athlete.
Nevertheless, as is already known, the legend of artistic gymnastics is going to perform at his ninth Olympic Games in Paris and, having forever inscribed his name in the world of sports, continues to conquer new heights of sport.
Thus, Oksana showed that hard work, training for eight hours, the desire to once again justify the trust of the fans and the country – with such motivation, even a heat of 43 degrees is not a hindrance, but rather helps. She believes that age is not a hindrance if you purposefully pursue your goal. One can understand: the recipe for success from Oksana Chusovitina is simple, namely, it comes from ability to work, dedication and love for the work that a person does, because it is thanks to this that an athlete achieves achievements. The athlete herself says about this: “I was not very talented, but I really liked doing gymnastics, and I remember – I did a lot of things,” Oksana recalls. “If the coach said: do it 10 times, I had to do it 11 times.” . I still love what I do.” Thus, in adulthood, the winner of international tournaments proved that professional sport is not only suitable for young people and forever inscribed her name in the world of big-time sports. Therefore, nothing is impossible, everything that comes your way is within your power: believe in yourself, work hard and success will find you!