Gymnastics Weekly News: 47-year old Oksana Chusovitina returns to all-around competition, captures 2023 Uzbek national title

Gymnastics legend Oksana Chusovitina returned to all-around competition this week at the Uzbekistan national championships.

The 47-year-old, who has competed in eight consecutive Olympic Games since Barcelona 1992, where she won team gold as a member of the Unified Squad, took four gold medals at the recent event, according to her Instagram.

"Well, meet me!!!! Absolute Champion of the Republic of Uzbekistan 2023🇺🇿🇺🇿🇺🇿," Chusovitina wrote on Instagram.

The Uzbek returned to competition last year after a brief retirement following the Tokyo 2020 Games in 2021. Her stated goal at the time was a medal for Uzbekistan at the Asian Games. Even then, she was relucant to speak of Paris 2024 goals.

“During the Tokyo Games and already before the Games, I said that I would leave professional sport, I would no longer compete,” Chusovitina told Olympics.com last year. “But after the Games, you know, I thought for a long time. I would regret if I left the sport. I wanted to leave a little differently, so I tried to start training, I continued my sports career in order to leave the sport the way I want it.”

Now, with just over a year until the Opening Ceremony in the French capital, Chusovitina's return to all four apparatus is likely in a bid to qualify to the Games at September's World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp, Belgium. By competing in the all-around, Chusovitina greatly improves the likelihood that she can punch a ticket to a historic ninth Games next year.

• Oksana Chusovitina: "If I set some goal... I have to achieve it."

Brody Malone faces uphill climb for all-around appearance in Paris

Two-time U.S. all-around champion and reigning World horizontal bar champion Brody Malone of the United States has a tough road ahead of him as the 2020 Olympian seeks a second trip to the Games next year in Paris.

Malone, 23, has already had two surgeries following a scary fall from the horizontal bar at a competition in March. He’s set to have a third, to repair a torn LCL, in the coming months, according to an interview with Gymnastics Now.

The American doesn’t expect to be fully cleared until nine months post-LCL surgery, which could be around April 2024. Leaving a quick turn-around to Paris.

"I should be able to be in routine shape, competition shape. It’s just a matter of being able to land on a hard landing,” Malone said, before adding he is unsure if he’ll be able to handle the pounding of floor exercise and vault by the Olympics. “I highly doubt I’ll be able to get back on those."

Georgia Godwin captures seventh Australian title

The 2022 Commonwealth Games all-around champion Georgia Godwin of Australia captured her seventh national title last week at the Australian Gymnastics Championships, held in the country’s Gold Coast.

A Tokyo 2020 Olympian, Godwin’s two-day total was 108.932. Ruby Pass finished runner-up (108.564), while Macy Pegoli was third (101.465).

Godwin also took the individual event titles on three of the four apparatus: vault, balance beam, and floor exercise. Pass won the uneven bars crown where Godwin finished third.

The win comes some 10 weeks after Godwin announced she was leaving her training base at Delta Gymnastics for the Australian Institute of Sport.

“I’m looking forward to focusing on my training leading into the Australian Championships and am excited for the year ahead,” she wrote in an Instagram post announcing the move.

From the vault…

This week, we take a look back at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the uneven bars at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Led by Kim Gwang-Suk’s 9.925 optional routine effort, the DPRK squad recorded its highest apparatus finish on the bars, sixth, en route to their 11th place finish overall.