Doha- March 5-World class gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, the Uzbekistan born, now Germany settled gymnast displayed her prowess before the Qatar sporting fraternity that she is still lfit to win an olympic gold
medal. On Wednesday she bagged gold medal in the Vault event in the
Ist Doha Artistic World series A Gymnastic championship here in
Aspire.. Olga who scored 14.962 points on Wednesday has been a top level gymnast for the past two decades. She was declared all round silver
medalist in Busan (Korea) Asian games in 2002 and she had competed for Uzbekistan.
Later her family migrated to Germany and at present Oksana is staying
in Cologne, Germany and training under her coach Shanna Poljaikova ..
When asked, Olga said' i was expecting to do well and had prepared for
the championship for quite some time., she said' this tournament has
given her tremendous boost and she hopes to take part in other world cup
A series in the coming months and finally the goal is to win medal in
the 2008 beijing olympics as Oksana had been training for the past two years .
Poljakova the accompanying coach of Oksana said, 'the
tournament at Doha has been organised in a very professional manner
and she wish to take part in more tournaments in Doha in near future.
Oksana said the 2008 Beijing olympics would be her fifth venture.
her coach said, 'Oksana is very very hardworking and she was
determined to give medal to her coutnry Germany.
Oksana has recently won the European Championship and was confident
of her performance in Doha which she did.
It mey be recalled that Oksana Aleksandrovna Chusovitina was born
on June 19, 1975 in Bukhara, Uzbek. She won Olympic medal in 1992
Barcelona Olympics and World Champion gymnast who has competed for Germany since 2006. She was formerly a citizen of, and a competitor
for, the Soviet Union before 1993 and Uzbekistan (1993-2006).
She is the only female gymnast ever to compete in four Olympic Games,
and has also competed in ten World Championships, three Asian Games
and three Goodwill Games. In addition, Chusovitina holds the record
for the most individual World Championships medals on a single event
(8, on the vault). She is also one of only a handful of women, along
with Cuban Leyanet Gonzalez and Soviet legend Larissa Latynina, to
return to high-level gymnastics and international competition after
becoming a mother. Chusovitina is remarkable in her ability to remain
competitive for so many years, often in the face of great adversity,
and has been cited as a role model and an inspiration by many of her
peers in the gymnastics community.
There is an emotional story behind Oksana. By 1990 Chusovitina was
a vital member of the Soviet team, and was sent to compete in various
international meets. She was the vault gold medalist at the 1990
Goodwill Games and nearly swept the 1990 World Sports Fair in Japan,
winning the all-around and every event except the uneven bars. The
following year she won the floor exercise gold at the 1991 World
Artistic Gymnastics Championships and placed second on the vault. In
1992 Chusovitina competed at the Olympics with the Unified Team,
shared in the team gold medal and placed seventh in the floor final.
She also won her second World Championships vault medal, a bronze
After the 1992 Olympics, when the former Soviet gymnasts returned to
their home republics, Chusovitina began competing for Uzbekistan and
training with UZB head coach Svetlana Kuznetsova. Conditions at the
national training facility in Tashkent were a far cry from the Soviet
Round Lake training center.
Chusovitina represented Uzbekistan from 1993 to 2006 and competed for them at the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympics, the 1994, 1998 and 2002
Asian Games and the 1994 and 2001 Goodwill Games. During this era she was the strongest gymnast on the Uzbekistan national team, earning
over 70 medals in international competitions and qualifying to the
Olympics three times.
Considering her superb performance , Chusovitina was granted the title
of "Honored Athlete of the Republic of Uzbekistan" by the Uzbekistan
Ministry of Cultural and Sports Affairs.
In late 1997 Chusovitina married Uzbekistani Olympic wrestler Bakhodir
Kurpanov. The couple originally met at the 1994 Asian Games in
Hiroshima, where they were both competing.The couple's son, Alisher,
was born in November 1999.
In 2002, Alisher was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia ,
Chusovitina and her husband accepted an offer of help from Shanna and
Peter Brüggemann, head coaches of the Toyota Cologne club, and moved to Germany. With prize money earned from gymnastics competitions,
along with the help of the Brüggemanns and members of the
international gymnastics community who fundraised and donated to the
cause, Chusovitina was able to secure treatment for Alisher at the
University of Cologne's hospital.While Alisher underwent treatment in
Cologne, Chusovitina trained with the German team. In 2003, thirteen years after her World Championships debut, Chusovitina won the gold medal on the vault at that year's World Championships in Anaheim.
In 2006, Chusovitina obtained German citizenship. Her first competition for Germany was the 2006 World Championships, where she
won a bronze medal on the vault and placed ninth in the all-around.
Chusovitina is sure a runner for gold medal in the 2008 beijing Olympics