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Oksana Chusovitina as She Prepared for Her Eighth Olympics
Profile of a trailblazer who changed the face of women’s gymnastics
In August of 2016, at the Arena Olímpica do Rio, in Brazil, Oksana Chusovitina, a gymnast from Uzbekistan, was getting ready to perform her first vault in the Olympic finals. She set out to do the Produnova vault, with two front somersaults — the most difficult in women’s artistic gymnastics, sometimes known as the “vault of death.” Chusovitina ran toward the apparatus, hit the springboard, pushed off the table, flipped twice in the air — and over-rotated, nearly landing on her knees and rolling out. Flushed from the effort, she shot a disappointed smile and returned to a focused deadpan. The announcer admiringly cooed: “She is 41 years old!” On the Olympic TV channel, a commentator chimed in: “She has learned this vault in her forties, it’s extraordinary!”
Back at the start, Chusovitina slicked her hair, spat on her palms, and pointed her hands and feet. Her face smoothed into a placid expression right before she broke into a sprint. The second jump went well, but the landing on the first one was so bad that it didn’t matter: medals were out of reach. Chusovitina was seventh. As she walked off, the gymnast blew kisses and waves to the audience, which gave her a standing ovation. “A final wave from Oksana Chusovitina, one of the great Olympians!” the commentator said. The audience roared. Chusovitina had announced that this competition would be her last. She had been competing for thirty years.
The next morning, Chusovitina changed her mind. She was in the bleachers, rooting for the Uzbek men’s team with Lyudmila Li, her friend, former teammate, and the head coach of the Uzbek women’s team. They jokingly discussed what Chusovitina would train next if she hadn’t retired, when they saw Igor Radivilov, a Ukrainian gymnast, perform his new vault. The Radivilov was similar to the Produnova but had three somersaults instead of two. Li quipped that Chusovitina should have kept competing only if she went for more difficulty, learning something like the…
