Asian Games: Soviet-Trained Veteran Eyes Olympic Record

At the age of 39 most athletes are thinking of retirement, but Soviet-trained Uzbek gymnast Oksana Chusovitina is eyeing a record seventh Olympics after starring at the Asian Games.

Women's gymnastics is dominated by teenagers and anyone over 20 is considered a veteran, but Chusovitina showed the youngsters how it is done in Incheon, adding a vault silver to her huge collection of medals. (Medal Tally)

Olympic gold and silver, and 11 world championship titles in a country-hopping, 23-year career, plus four different gymnastics techniques named after her -- what more could she hope to achieve? (Denied Hijab, Qatar Women Withdraw From Asian Games)

"I do have one ambition -- to make my seventh Olympic Games, in Rio de Janeiro in two years," she said, deadly serious, before adding with a smile: "It's my favourite number, seven."

It would be a record for a gymnast, but Chusovitina, who won her Olympic gold medal and the first of her world titles well before any of her current Uzbekistan team-mates were born, says age is just a number.

"I am still doing gymnastics because frankly I love the sport, it gives me pleasure to come to the podium and do what I love to do every day," she said.

"Many of us go to work, some of us don't like it but I come to the gym and I feel like a fish in water."

She took the first of her 10 individual world titles in 1991 at the age of 16, but more than two decades on, the striplings she trains with hold no fears.

"When I see young gymnasts, I don't worry -- I think they should worry when they see me," she laughed.

- Germany and back -

Chusovitina's career is a reflection of the way the world changed as the Soviet Union collapsed and communism crumbled.

Born in Bokhara in 1975, when the Kremlin's rule over Uzbekistan seemed unshakeable, Chusovitina won her first world championship gold for the Soviet Union.

A year later she won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with the Commonwealth of Independent States -- the short-lived successor to the Soviet Union -- before going to on compete for her native Uzbekistan.

Then in 2002 her son Alisher was diagnosed with leukaemia and the family moved to Germany for treatment.

Chusovitina took German citizenship in 2006 and won silver for her adopted country at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, missing out on gold by just 0.075 points to North Korea's Hong Jong-Un -- who also beat her to first at the Asian Games on Wednesday.

She returned with her family to Uzbekistan in 2013 and with her son, now 15, happily free of cancer, Chusovitina says she is proud to be competing for her homeland again.

Keeping a 39-year-old body in top condition for an explosive event like the vault takes careful management and Chusovitina's coach Svetlana Boginskaya -- a triple Olympic gold medallist -- said she has cut back a lot in recent years.

"She doesn't train that much any more, only two hours a day. She takes her son to school, makes breakfast, then goes to the gym for a couple of hours, cleans the house -- like any normal housewife," Boginskaya said.

"In the athletes' village there's nothing for her to do, no laundry to clean, so she's like 'I'm bored!'"

Tom Cruise

Chusovitina came out of the legendary Soviet state gymnastics training programme which produced countless champions. But her role model was unusually Western.

"When I was little I had a big poster over my bed of Tom Cruise and every night I was dreaming of him and that was my motivation to wake up and go to train -- maybe come to America one day and meet him," she said.

China, the current gymnastics powerhouse, has come under fire for the gruelling regime it puts athletes through, beginning in early childhood. But Chusovitina says it is the only way to produce the best.

"It's very similar, they train as much as we used to train back in Soviet days and that's why they get results -- without hard training and discipline you can't get to the top," she said.

But she is clear that she would not want her children to follow her into gymnastics.

"No," she said firmly, "It's a very difficult sport. My son did gymnastics but he was afraid of heights. Now he plays basketball."

For herself, Chusovitina hopes an ankle injury clears up in time for next month's world championships -- and after that, Rio calls.