BEIJING — In a gymnastics meet that has been littered with controversy about allegedly underage gymnasts, a 33-year-old woman — the oldest in the competition by a decade — won a medal Sunday.
Oksana Chusovitina, a veteran of five Olympics who won a team gold medal as part of the Unified team that was made up of athletes from the old Soviet Union, earned an individual silver medal Sunday when she did two sturdy vaults.
She is the mother of a 9-year-old son who is in recovery from leukemia. It is that illness that brought Chusovitina to Germany six years ago. It is because of that illness that Chusovitina competes for Germany instead of her native Uzbekistan. And gymnastics helped save her son Alisher’s life.
Chusovitina is unusual among the pony-tailed sprites who dominate the sport. She has short hair and straight bangs. Her leotards aren’t sparkly or in pastel pinks or purples. She prefers to wear darker colors. And she is not done with the sport, not according to what she said Sunday, with that silver medal in hand.
“I could go to London in 2012,” she said. “I will only be 37.”
In 2002 she and her husband Bakhodir Kurpanov, a former wrestler, were competing at the Asian Games in Korea when her mother called to say Alisher was sick. When Chusovitina returned home, it was to find out he had leukemia. She and her husband struggled to find immediate treatment for Alisher in either Uzbekistan or Moscow, but Chusovitina also had a training base in Germany. It was there that her son began his leukemia treatments.
Healthy now, Alisher excels at gymnastics, according to Chusovitina’s coach, Shanna Poljakova. It was Chusovitina’s gymnastics that paid for that improved health. She needed to raise about $200,000 for the treatment, so she did exhibitions and clinics. The Texas gym WOGA, where newly crowned Olympic all-around champion Nastia Liukin trains, donated money to Chusovitina.
Chusovitina speaks Russian more comfortably than German, but she did interviews Sunday in German that were translated to English.
She feels as young as an 18-year-old, Chusovitina said, and the silver medal felt wonderful.
“I won it for my son,” she said of Alisher, back home attending school. “That makes me happy.”
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