Oksana Chusovitina as She Prepared for Her Eighth Olympics

Profile of a trailblazer who changed the face of women’s gymnastics

Alex Bogatyrev via Shutterstock

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…