At 51, Uzbek gymnastics legend Oksana Chusovitina qualified fourth for the vault final at her seventh Asian Games, 32 years after her continental debut. With eight Asian Games medals and eight Olympic appearances, Chusovitina says she hopes to qualify for LA28 and will compete for as long as she can.
by sportswriters Cao Yibo, Ji Jiadong, Yue Chenxing
NAGOYA, Japan, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- "Chuso" is old enough to be the mother of most of her rivals.
At Nagoya City General Gymnasium, where artistic gymnastics is underway at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, a familiar figure lined up at the end of the vault runway.
When the announcer called her name, several spectators in the stands did a double-take: the woman preparing to sprint down the runway and launch herself over the vaulting table was 51 years old.
Oksana Chusovitina, the Uzbek gymnastics legend, was competing at her seventh Asian Games, a run of continental competition stretching back 32 years to Hiroshima 1994. Along the way, she has collected eight Asian Games medals: two golds, four silvers and two bronzes.
On Tuesday, she added another chapter to that remarkable career, qualifying fourth for the vault final with a score of 13.266.
But medals tell only part of Chusovitina's story. Her longevity in gymnastics has been shaped by two enduring forces: devotion to her son and love for the sport itself.
A MOTHER'S BARGAIN
Chusovitina won Olympic team gold as a 17-year-old at Barcelona 1992, competing for the Unified Team. At the time, it appeared to be the high point of a promising career.
Then, in 2002, her three-year-old son Alisher was diagnosed with leukemia. Facing medical bills she could not otherwise cover, Chusovitina turned gymnastics into a lifeline, competing wherever prize money and support were available. In search of better treatment for her son, she switched allegiance to Germany.
At the Beijing 2008 Olympics, competing for her adopted country at the age of 33, she won silver on vault. Before she had even left Beijing, she received the news she had been hoping for over six years: her son was cancer-free.
For many athletes, that might have marked the natural end of the journey. Chusovitina kept going.
STILL RUNNING, STILL VAULTING
She competed at Tokyo 2020, her eighth Olympics, at the age of 46. A lower-leg injury forced her out of Paris 2024, and many assumed her career was finally over.
In February 2025, at 50, she announced she was not done. A month later, she underlined the point by winning vault gold at a World Cup stop in Baku with a score of 13.516.
On Sept. 18, she posted on social media: "My seventh Asian Games. I'm here."
In Nagoya on Tuesday, with her fingernails painted in the blue, white, and green of the Uzbek flag, Chuso walked into the mixed zone afterward, beaming.
Asked when she planned to retire - a question she inevitably gets - she shot back with a grin: "What, don't you want to see me anymore?"
What keeps her coming back, she says, is not the crowd or the competition - it's the fight with herself.
She said overcoming herself gives her a huge sense of satisfaction, adding, "If what I do can inspire others, that makes me happy too. Doing what I want to do matters a great deal to me."
NO FINISH LINE IN SIGHT
In 2017, Chusovitina was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame and remains the only inductee still actively competing.
By the time Los Angeles hosts the Olympics in 2028, Chuso will be 53, and she is not ruling out a ninth appearance.
"I will try to qualify for 2028," she said at the ongoing Asian Games, repeating: "It's sport, it's gymnastics. If it's possible, I will try to compete at LA28."
Over 32 years, her rivals have changed generation after generation. She now shares the competition floor with gymnasts born in the 2000s and 2010s. But age, to her, is not the obstacle many assume it to be.
"I feel like I get smarter every year," she said. "I'm feeling great, and it's great to perform here when we have so many fans and so much support from the spectators, and I will perform as long as I can. I'm not competing against anyone else - I'm just enjoying the process." ■
