Oksana Chusovitina's road to Paris 2024: Against all odds
The eight-time Olympian in gymnastics faces an uphill battle to punch a ticket to her ninth Games next year in Paris. What can the 47-year-old accomplish at this week's Asian Championships?
Artistic Gymnastics
Oksana Chusovitina of Uzbekistan spent some 67 days away from artistic gymnastics before realising she wasn’t quite ready to move on from the sport to which she has dedicated her.
The soon-to-be 48-year-old (her birthday is Monday, 19 June), eight-time Olympian had planned to end her career at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
Those few on hand – fellow athletes, coaches, judges, media and broadcasters – thought they were witnessing her swansong as she waved goodbye to the sport after vaulting during the qualifying round on 25 July 2021.
“During the Games in Tokyo, I did announce before the Games that I would quit sports, no longer compete,” Chusovitina told Olympics.com in an interview last year. “But after the Games, I thought for a long time and still thought I’d be sorry if I didn’t leave the way I wanted to. I still wanted to leave a little bit differently, so I tried to start training and resumed my sports career so I could leave the way I wanted to.
“I would like to leave with a medal for Uzbekistan,” she said later, “I have already said that it will not be at the Olympic Games, let it be at our Asian Games, but still I want to leave beautifully with a medal.”
Now, with Paris 2024 fast approaching, the 1992 Olympic team gold medallist and 2008 vault silver medallist, is looking to defy the odds once again and earn a spot at a historic ninth Games.
Below is a summary of the qualification process that Chusovitina begins on this week at the Asian Gymnastics Championships in Singapore.
Oksana Chusovitina’s road to Paris 2024
Chusovitina has already secured a spot at September’s World Artistic Gymnastics Championships via her performances at the World Cup events earlier this year.
However, her current qualification would only allow her to compete on the vault, limiting her options for Paris 2024 qualification.
Instead, Chusovitina will hope to be one of eight individual all-arounders to advance to Worlds from this week’s Asian Championships. The top eight women in the all-around standings not from teams already qualified to Antwerp earn tickets to the global event.
The Worlds in Antwerp are the largest qualifier to Paris for artistic gymnastics and Chusovitina’s best chance to earn a spot at her ninth Olympic Games.
In Antwerp, Chusovitina has two main roads to qualify to the Games.
First, if she can finish among the top 14 women from National Olympic Committees (NOC) not already qualified, she would advance.
The second chance for Chusovitina is likely on the vault, the event where she is a nine-time world medallist. At the Worlds, there is one quota spot available on each apparatus for the highest ranking (even from qualifying) athlete not from an already qualified nation.
If Chusovitina fails via those methods in Antwerp, she will have two remaining pathways to the Olympic Games.
The first is the 2024 World Cup series, where the top two eligible finishers on each apparatus can punch their tickets. The second is by being the top all-around finisher at next year’s Asian continental qualifier.