37 years ago, the then 13-year-old Oksana Chusovitina made her international elite debut at the Cottbus International, winning a silver medal on the floor exercise and beginning a journey that would see her claim two Olympic medals. Now, at 51, she continues to compete against athletes decades younger than her in a sport where most retire before they turn 30. Chusovitina has no plans to step away and continues to defy expectations, as she recently showed at the Asian Championships in Zunyi.

On June 25, the Asian Gymnastics Union shared a video of the Uzbekistani legend, where she performed Tsukahara-style vaults. Her entry showed a half turn onto the table, followed by clean backward salto variations, all landed with control. For someone competing at this age, the execution stood out even more than the difficulty.

Even the federation captioned it: “First vault after turning 51 and still flying. Oksana Chusovitina continues to prove that passion has no age limit.”

This whole season, Chusovitina has been surprising fans. At the Cottbus World Cup in February, she stretched her vaults and finished second with an average score of 12.99. In March, she competed at the Baku World Cup, continuing her steady presence on the international circuit. By May, she was back in Uzbekistan for the Tashkent World Challenge Cup, where she placed fifth on vault in front of a home crowd.

There was some uncertainty around her return after she skipped the 2025 World Championships in Jakarta. But she later explained it was a planned break, taken to focus on training so she could return at full strength. Her ultimate goal is not the 2026 season but the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

“My number one goal is to get to Los Angeles,” she told Olympics.com. “But there is so much time before then, so I’m not thinking that far ahead. I go step-by-step, from one competition to the next. If it happens, it happens. If not, then no. But I will try, and I will give it everything I’ve got.”

Chusovitina has already competed at eight Olympic Games, a record unmatched in gymnastics. Along the way, she has built one of the most decorated careers the sport has ever seen.

She holds the Guinness World Record for the most World Championship medals on a single apparatus, winning nine on vault, and has had five skills named after her in the Code of Points. Most athletes would have long since settled into retirement after achievements like those. And yet, Chusovitina is still chasing one more moment on the biggest stage, possibly driven by unfinished business after the 2024 Paris Games, which she missed because of an injury.

The gymnast who refused to stop

Oksana Chusovitina remains one of the most experienced Olympians in history. She won team gold at Barcelona 1992 for the Unified Team and added an Olympic silver on vault in Beijing 2008, competing for Germany. Few athletes in any sport have stayed at this level across so many generations. After the 2012 London Olympics, she initially stepped away from the sport after finishing fifth on vault and believing her long career might finally be over.

She was in her late 30s, an age where most gymnasts are long past their prime. However, her retirement was short-lived. She returned to elite gymnastics in 2013 and returned to international competition. She continued to compete for almost another 10 years, doing World Cups and big competitions until Tokyo 2020, which took place in 2021 because of the Covid 19 pandemic. She competed in her eighth Olympiad at the age of 46. 

After her performance, she received a standing ovation from fellow gymnasts. Walking out of the arena in Tokyo, she said, “I cried tears of happiness because so many people have supported me for a long time.

“I’m alive. I’m happy. I’m here without any injuries, and I can stand on my own.” Even then, Chusovitina was not done.

In 2022, she returned again to elite competition, focusing on vault at World Cup events and setting her sights on qualifying for Paris 2024, which would have been her ninth Olympics.

Her qualification route ran through the Asian Gymnastics Championships, but an injury in May 2024 during training forced her to withdraw, ending that Olympic dream. And still, she has not stepped away.

Chusovitina will be 53 when the Games take place in LA, which, quite frankly, seems a bizarre age for a gymnast. No one in their 50s has ever taken part in this event at the Olympics, with the closest being Marian Dragulescu of Romania, who took part in Tokyo at the age of 40. Now, with Los Angeles 2028 in sight, no one can say for sure if it will be Chusovitina’s final chapter.