The legend continues: Nino Salukvadze is still writing history and will be in her tenth consecutive Olympic Game

“My mind is alert, the technique is not lost, but your eyes can’t see anymore.” In Tokyo, during her ninth consecutive Games, Nino Salukvadze implied that her historic Olympic presence ended in the Japanese capital. However, the sports shooting legend is going for more.

Salukvadze, aged 54, secured Georgia a place for Paris 2024 by finishing fourth in the 25-meter pistol test during the European Games held in Wroclaw, Poland. The shooter lagged behind Anna Korakaki, Antoaneta Kostadinova and Doreen Vennekamp, and she kept the spot because Greece, Bulgaria and Germany already had their place in the next Games.

In this way, Salukvadze will become the first woman in Paris to participate in 10 consecutive Olympic Games and will match the record held by Ian Millar, who represented Canada in the horse-riding jumping event from Munich 1972 to London 2012 (he was not in Moscow 1980 because of the boycott).

Salukvadze was born in Tbilisi on February 1, 1969 and her first Olympic incursion was in Seoul 1988, where she won the gold medal in the 25-meter pistol for the Soviet Union and the silver medal in the 10-meter air gun.

She won the third Olympic medal two decades later, in Beijing 2008, when she completed the podium in a final of the 10-meter Air Gun that left one of the most emblematic images of the Games that were held in China.

Salukvadze was already representing Georgia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and her country was in conflict with Russia, which was represented in the definition of the test by Natalia Paderina, who would end up winning a silver medal.

After the competition, Salukvadze and Paderina hugged each other on the podium giving a message of peace to the world. “We live in the 21st century. We shouldn’t stoop so low to wage wars between us,” the Georgian woman said at the time.

In addition to winning all three Olympic medals, Salukvadze was a six-time world champion and a four-time European champion. However, sporting successes coexisted with the problems that Georgia was going through after the dissolution of the former USSR.

“There was nothing left, all the villages were looted and demolished,” the shooter said in an interview with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games website and recounted that, when the power was not cut off, she would prepare at the training camp she had set up in the garage of her house.

“After that, I would go to the competitions and win. It was a paradox,” said Salukvadze, who was the flag bearer of the Georgian delegation at the London 2012 Olympic Games and the last Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Salukvadze equaled Italian-German canoeist Josefa Idem-Guerrini with eight consecutive Games in Rio 2016 and set another record in Brazil: Nino and Tsotne Machavariani became the first mother-son duo to share an Olympic Games.

Precisely, Tsotne and Vakhtang, Salukvadze’s father, were the ones who convinced her to spread the legend in Paris 2024. “He told me, ‘Nino, I thought you were a smart girl. You just have to wait three years after Tokyo, why don’t you try going to the next Olympic Games? It will be a record of 10 Olympic Games,” said the shooter on the advice of her 92-year-old father, who was her coach for much of her career. “He’s my idol and I told him I’ll try,” she admitted.

“It’s not important for me, it’s important for my country. Georgia is really small and 80% of the world’s population doesn’t know where it is. So maybe if I achieve this, they will know about my small paradise country,” Salukvadze explained in an interview with Olympics. And the tenth Game is already a reality.