Chusovitina moves away from Paris 2024: she could not qualify in her specialty and has only one chance left at the Asian level

There is only one chance left for two-time Olympic medalist Oksana Chusovitina to qualify for her ninth consecutive Olympic Games. After finishing 23rd in the jump standings at the Baku World Cup last weekend, the 48-year-old gymnast ran out of mathematical chances of winning one of the two odds for Paris 2024 available on that apparatus.

Her scores in the capital of Azerbaijan were 12,226 for her first attempt and 11,900 for the second, giving her an average of 12,083, which was not enough to even be among the eight finalists. Although there is one date left on the circuit in April in Doha, there is no chance of winning the place for Chusovitina because North Korea’s An Chang Ok and Bulgarian Valentina Georgieva secured first and second place in the jump ranking, after dominating the three rounds played in Cairo, Cottbus and Baku.

There is one last chance of Olympic qualification for Chusovitina in the Asian Championship which, oddly enough, will be in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, so she will have the special motivation of competing at home. The tournament is scheduled for May 24, 25 and 26 and there it would have to occupy the highest position among the athletes who are still eligible for an Olympic quota. The key is that only those who compete in the All Around, that is, on all four devices, can access that ticket. It will be a difficult task, since in recent years, Chusovitina has rarely participated in all four devices. On the international stage, the closest precedent is 2019 at the World Championships in Stuttgart and on a continental level, it did so in the Asian Championship last year, where it finished 18th.

Chusovitina began her career competing for the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. After the breakup, she represented the Unified Team in Barcelona 1992, where she won the gold medal for teams. She competed for Uzbekistan in a first stage and in Beijing 2008 she represented Germany (where her son, Alisher, was treated for leukemia). At those Games in the capital of China, she won her individual medal in the jumping event, the apparatus in which she excelled the most during her extensive career. For the Olympic cycle heading to London 2012, she returned to Uzbekistan.

If she qualifies for the Paris Games, Chusovitina will break her own record for gymnastics appearances with nine and tie the record for the most Olympic appearances by a woman in any sport. Georgian shooter Nino Salukvadze was 52 years old when she competed in the Tokyo 2020 Games, also her ninth Olympic Games.