Oksana Chusovitina

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Oksana Aleksandrovna Chusovitina (Russian:Оксана Александровна Чусовитина)(born June 19, 1975, Bukhara, Uzbek SSR) is an Uzbek (and former Soviet) gymnast.

To date, Chusovitina's career in elite gymnastics has spanned almost twenty years. She won the USSR Junior Nationals in 1988 and began competing at the senior international level in 1989, before some of her current rivals were even born.

From her earliest meets, Chusovitina's strengths were her explosive tumbling and vaulting. She was the vault gold medalist at the 1990 Goodwill Games; the following year she won the floor exercise gold at the 1991 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. In 1992 Chusovitina competed at the Olympics with the Unified Team, shared in the team gold medal and competed in the floor final.

After the Olympics when the former Soviet gymnasts returned to their home republics, Chusovitina began competing for Uzbekistan. She represented Uzbekistan at the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games.

In 1997 Chusovitina married Uzbek Olympic wrestler Bakhodir Kurpanov; the couple had a son, Alisher, in 1999. In 2002, Alisher was diagnosed with leukemia. Chusovitina and her husband moved to Germany to pursue advanced medical treatment for him. They have continued to live and train to Germany, and Chusovitina has expressed wishes to represent them in international competition. However, to date, she has continued to compete for Uzbekistan.

As of 2006, Chusovitina continues to compete in international events. Most recently, she won a silver medal on the vault at the 2005 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia.

Chusovitina is remarkable in her ability to remain competitive on the international circuit for so many years, often in the face of great adversity. The national training center in Tashkent, where Chusovitina trained for many years, had antiquated, and in some cases, unsafe equipment. When Chusovitina competed on the new vaulting table at the 2001 Goodwill Games, it was the first time she had ever seen or used the new apparatus. In spite of the poor training conditions, Chusovitina was still able to produce world-class routines.

Chusovitina is the only female gymnast ever to participate in four Olympics. She is also one of only a handful of women, along with Cuban Leyanet Gonzalez and Soviet legend Larissa Latynina, to return to high-level gymnastics and international competition after becoming a mother.

Skills

Floor Exercise: Chusovitina is credited as being the first woman to successfully perform a layout-full out on FX. She has won world titles on this event. Her music for floor routines was:
* 1991: "Guillaume Tell" by Gioacchino Rossini
* 1992: "Triumphal March" from Spartacus by Aram Khachaturyan

Vault: Chusovitina is renowned as a vault specialist. Interestingly, she is the only top vaulter in the world who does not perform Yurchenko style vaults. Instead, she competes only front entry and Tsukahara-family vaults.

External links

Olympic Champions in Artistic Gymnastics – Women's Team Competition

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World Champions in Artistic Gymnastics – Women's Team Competition

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