46-year-old "gymnastics grandmother" Chusovkina waved off the field

According to the Russian TELEVISION Station today, on the 25th, two senior women who have participated in the Olympic Games for many times announced their retirement. One is Georgian hero Nino Salukvadze, who won a shooting gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The other was Uzbek veteran Oksana Chusovkina, who won the women's gymnastics team gold medal for the CIS team in Barcelona in 1992. The latter's appearance in Tokyo was almost a glimpse, with two mistakes in qualifying, and her eighth Olympic trip came to an end.

The Olympic Games have never been humane, not biased to any of the participants, even if the athletes' obsessions are earth-shattering. Otherwise, Chusovykina could at least advance to the final, if not win the card. The vaulting horse she competed for this time is her specialty, and she has won 9 medals in world-class competitions. Most recently, three years ago, she won a silver medal at the Asian Games in Jakarta. How I hope that the God of the Olympics can give this petite woman a farewell gift, so that she can experience the highest moments of gymnastics in her final battle.

Her first Olympic appearance was in 1992, and although she won the team gold medal, Chusovkina did not receive much attention, and she was weak and unobtrusive in the star-studded and undefeated CIS gymnastics team. Such a champion team has the most stringent rankings: someone is only responsible for pushing the piano, and someone can sit in the center of the stage and play. Highlighting Barcelona are Tatyana Guchu from Ukraine and Svetlana Boginskaya from Belarus. Chusovykina has done her job well, knowing that she is not qualified to make mistakes, and will eventually be obscured by the light of outstanding athletes.

At that Olympic Games, the CIS countries formed a joint team, holding high the white Olympic flag. At that time, who would have thought that this girl, who had just turned 17, would become an evergreen tree in the sports world?

In Beijing, she represented Germany and won a single silver medal. Although she stood on the podium, she did not feel the pride of the flag of the motherland flying overhead. Going around, her experience is probably unique in sports: the moment she first tasted the fruits of world-class competition victory, she was still a CIS citizen, and then she won 5 world championship medals for her native Uzbekistan, and then transferred to Germany to win the Beijing Olympic medal on behalf of Berlin. After the "German stage" of her life, she returned to her homeland, hoping to win glory for her country.

In the Rio Olympics, the time to realize the dream can only be postponed for 4 years, because the epidemic has actually become 5 years.

The 25th was certainly not her ideal curtain call. This summer, reporters called her, who was training in Germany, and she said she was doing her best to practice vaulting.

She said on the phone: "My movement difficulty coefficient is comparable to that of the girls in the world championship final in Stuttgart and the current competition, so I don't think it's a dream to win a medal in Tokyo." Without a goal, it's hard to move forward. Even though I never needed any additional incentives..."

People with lofty ideals really don't need new motivations to push themselves to achieve better results. However, the ideal is fragile. Two days before the start of the tournament, Chusovkina's dream was shattered: she was supposed to be the standard-bearer of the entrance ceremony, but she was temporarily removed without any explanation.

Her career began in the CIS era, and her view of many things may be very different from those of today's athletes. I dare say that the weight of holding high the flag and going around the scene for a week is in the heart of the 46-year-old veteran who is still holding on to it, which those who deprive her of this opportunity cannot understand. After the opening ceremony, she tried her best to hide her loss, she was smiling, but muttering to herself: "My motives have been strangled..."

Officially on the field, twice vaulted, both of which lost their balance when they landed. She rushed to the camera before the score came out on the big screen and said, "I love everyone, goodbye!" (Compilation/Group of Teachers)

Source: Reference News Network