Gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, who competes for Uzbekistan, poses for a selfie as gymnast after gymnast ends her practice session at the Tokyo Games last week. He is royalty in the game.
Chusovitina is 46 years old - that's not a typo - and has been at or near the top of her game for three decades. Her son, Alisher, 22, is in college and older than many gymnasts in Tokyo.
This is his eighth Olympics, an astonishing streak in the sport geared to young bodies. But he has shown that longevity and excellence are possible. At the age of 33, she won a silver medal in the vault at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, her current specialty. At 43, she finished fourth in the vault at the 2018 World Championships. She said that these days she trains for about three hours a day and takes Sundays off together.
Although Chusovitina has hinted at retirement over the years, she said that this Olympics would actually be her last. She wants to spend time with her family, including her husband, who competed in the Olympics in Greco-Roman wrestling.
"I think it's time now, really," she said. "I want to be a mother and a wife."
The most emotional moment in the arena was for Chusovitina when she ended her competition on the vault. In a contrasting, yet quite poignant way, the lack of fans emphasized the apparent respect and admiration from their fellow athletes and those with deep ties to the gymnastics world for appearing for the competition. They were standing, cheering and posing for photographs to bid them farewell. He averaged 14.166 in his two vault attempts, a score that wasn't high enough to advance to next week's finals.
Chusovitina has represented many countries and institutions at the Olympics, including the Soviet Union, the Unified Team, and Germany. His first game was with the Soviet Union in 1992, where he won a gold medal in the team event. Since then, she has won 11 medals at 17 World Championships, and has five moves to her name as she was the first woman to perform at a World Championships or Olympics.
On Saturday, Aly Raisman, a three-time Olympic gold medalist for the United States, posted a video on Twitter of Chusovitina performing a vault at the 1992 Olympics, two years before Raisman was born. She called Chusovitina "an icon forever".