“Women’s” gymnastics is famous for its tiny teen athletes, but one Olympic competitor, Oksana Chusovitina, is 41 years old:
When American gymnastics superstar Simone Biles was born in 1997, Oksana Chusovitina had already won five world medals and an Olympic gold.
When Biles’ teammate Laurie Hernandez was born in 2000, Chusovitina was already the mother of a young son.
When Gabby Douglas made her Olympic debut in 2012, Chusovitina was competing in her sixth Games.
A list like this could go on all day, because there might be no other athlete in history who has defied the odds, and Father Time, like the 41-year-old Chusovitina. She is in Rio for her unprecedented seventh Olympics.
Aly Raisman, the U.S. team’s captain, is 22 years old, and she’s returning for her second Olympic Games. Her teammates refer to her as “Grandma Aly” because of her age and habits. And while she may be considered old in the sport, she has quite a ways to go if she wants to match Chusovitina as the oldest woman to ever compete at the Olympics in gymnastics.
Chusovitina was born in 1975 in what is now Uzbekistan, and she learned gymnastics through training in the rigid Soviet Union system. She won the all-around at her first major competition — the USSR’s junior national championships — as a 13-year-old in 1988. In 1991, at her first world championships, she earned three medals, including the gold on floor. To win that title, she mounted with a full-twisting double layout — a move so difficult that it was named after her. It’s still considered so hard that Biles, the favorite to win the 2016 Olympic title on floor, will use the same skill in her first tumbling pass — 25 years later.
She doesn’t train like the young girls:
Due to her age and injury concerns, she isn’t in the gym as much as most of her competitors these days. “At this time, I don’t need much physical training,” she said.
“I do a lot of mental training. I have muscle memory that my body has developed over the years. I typically put in two to two-and-a-half hours in the gym.
“And then I visualize exactly how the skill needs to be done. I do this in my head, and when I get to the gym, all the mental preparation that I did after breakfast or just walking around, it just transfers to the gym and, if I’m vaulting, I know exactly what my body needs to be doing. I know exactly what I need to be doing to get a better execution or a better height or a better landing.”