When Oksana Chusovitina thought of what she would be doing in 2021, “still training and preparing for the Olympics” probably wasn’t what came to her mind. Chusovitina said multiple times that she would finally retire after the 2020 Olympics but the postponement meant another year of training and interruptions due to the pandemic. She talked to “Pride of the Nation” magazine about her career and how she has been dealing with the challenges of the past year.
Q: How did you start gymnastics and why did you choose this sport?
A: My older brother wanted to do artistic gymnastics and my parents decided to sign me up together with him, so that I wouldn’t stay home alone. I came and really liked running and jumping but at the time, as a child, I didn’t even dream of becoming a champion, I just liked training. My brother quit half a year later but I stayed in the sport.
Q: But could you have done equestrian sports, since you really wanted to ride horses?
A: Yes but I think it’s all still ahead of me and I’ll ride horses as a hobby after I retire from gymnastics. When I came to the horse riding club, I was told, “Come later, at 12-13 years old, it’s too early now”. But when I was 12-13 years old, I was already successfully competing in artistic gymnastics, so I decided not to change the sport.
Q: Can you talk about your coaches? Who gave you the foundation that you’ve been perfecting from competition to competition? Who was your first coach and who’s coaching you now for the Tokyo Olympics?
A: My first coach was Svetlana Kuznetsova. I trained with her for quite a while, for more than 20 years. She taught me everything, she raised me as an athlete. But later, when my son Alisher’s health issues started and he needed urgent treatment, I had to move and change coaches. Nevertheless, Svetlana Mikhaylovna and I are still in touch. Fortunately, the doctors managed to save Alisher. He’s completely fine now. And I trained under the guidance of another coach until the pandemic started. Since the start of it, the preparation for the 2021 Olympics temporarily stalled. I’m still training now, of course, but on my own. I kept in touch with the coach – I don’t want to talk about him in more details, it’s too early – and I hope that I’ll soon start training with him. And I want to tell you – in the training process, everything depends on the athlete. If they want to achieve results and strive towards them, everything will work out. If they don’t want it, no coach, even the best one, will be able to help.
Q: Is there a place for friendship in the sport or the fact that you’re competing against each other prevents you from being friends?
A: Of course I’m friends with other gymnasts.
Q: Are you still in touch with the gymnasts with whom you started in the elite sport back in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympics?
A: Yes, the whole team stays in touch. I talk the most to Svetlana Boginskaya and see her most frequently – we share news and advice and help each other. When I’m at a competition and don’t have a coach with me, she’s always with me, she supports me and acts as my manager. Besides that, I’m also friends with Elena Zamolodchikova, Lyosha Nemov, Svetlana Khorkina – with the gymnasts from the generation that’s close to me in age and spirit.
Q: You’ve been competing for 30 years. How did the sport change during this time?
A: Artistic gymnastics’s technical aspects change every four years, the judging system is reconsidered and changed, the elements become more difficult, but at the same time, we, the athletes, don’t stay in one place either. I’m watching young athletes who I’m competing against and wonder – how would they perform if they had the training conditions that I and my fellow gymnasts had. Now, there are springboards and floor with springs in training but that wasn’t available 30 years ago and we still somehow managed and perfected elements from practice to practice.
Q: How did your training system changed with years?
A: I became wiser. Of course, with years, it’s physically harder for me to compete but at the same time, I don’t make the mistakes I made twenty years ago anymore.
Q: Which of the seven Olympics you competed at were the most memorable and why?
A: The Beijing Olympics, of course, and not because I won a silver medal there but because after the end of the Games, I learned that the German doctors managed to cure my son Alisher’s leukemia.
Q: Is he an athlete?
A: He’s finishing school now, he lives in Germany. He plays basketball and dreams of becoming a Math and Physical Education teacher. He likes living in Germany.
Q: In one of the interviews, you said that you like trying things that you weren’t able to do before. For example, I’m now training a new vault.” What was the vault that you’ve been training for four years and did you manage to master it?
A: It’s the vault named after Elena Produnova, she was the one to compete it first. I was getting it ready four years ago. I really hope that I’ll be able to do it at the Tokyo Olympics!
Q: Which event do you consider your signature one in gymnastics and which is the hardest?
A: All-around is the hardest. It’s physically hard to endure and have the best possible execution. My signature event is vault. Of course, in training, I always train on all four events but when I’m preparing for competitions, I focus only on vault. Why should I spend energy on bars if I know that I won’t make an event final even at a World Cup. That’s why I spend most of my attention on vault.
Q: Is artistic gymnastics a subjective sport in your opinion? On which apparatus judges have the most chances to raise or lower their scores based on their attitudes towards an athlete?
A: If an athlete executes everything well, a judge will not have reasons to lower the score. But if an athlete has an error, the deductions can be higher than needed sometimes. This happened to me – if I made errors, my scores were lowered, but this was objective. I think that you shouldn’t try to do better than you’re able to. You need to go our and do your routine well in order not to give the judges reasons to nitpick your routine. And that’s valid not just for artistic gymnastics but for all judged sports.
Q: Notably, you worked as the head coach for three years, while still competing.
A: Yes, from 2009 to 2021.
Q: Did you start working as a coach when you decided to retire or there was a different reason?
A: It’s just that I had a torn Achilles ligament at the time and a shoulder surgery. I didn’t know for sure at the time whether I’d be able to come back. And I got an interesting offer – to work as a coach. I was really interested and took it. But when I started coaching kids, I realized that it would be easier for me to come back as an athlete than to be a coach.
Q: Why? Did you work with very young gymnasts and it was hard to find individual approach to everyone?
A: No, I coached girls aged 15-20 and older.
Q: But in that age, I think, everyone who stayed in the sport knows what and why they’re doing, right?
A: Well, I wouldn’t say so. In my coaching career, there were cases when 15-20-year-old girls needed to be motivated and needed strictness sometimes. I’m only hard as an athlete, but I don’t like forcing people to do something in training or in life. I want kids to do gymnastics willingly. I don’t want to convince anyone to do it. It’s not in my nature. Anyway, a coach’s job is hard work.
Q: What do you plan to do when you retire after the Tokyo Olympics?
A: I want to open a sports club for kids with recreational programs only. With that, if we see that, for example, a really strong boy comes to the club who would be great for competitive wrestling, we, of course, will suggest to him and his parents to go to a competitive program.
Q: So, there will be not just artistic gymnastics but other sports in your club, including wrestling?
A: Yes. There will be artistic and rhythmic gymnastics, wrestling, and general fitness. I want to open these programs for people of any ages.
Q: How did the lockdown affect your training and your life in general? Did you get any interesting hobbies that you didn’t have time for before the lockdown?
A: I started cooking more, since there wasn’t really any training during that time. So, I spent more time in the kitchen. I know how to cook, I just didn’t have time for it before. In general, I spent more time with my family, my husband during the lockdown that I’ve ever been able to spent during my athletic career.
Q: What do normally you do in your spare time?
A: I like riding horses and do it whenever I have a chance. I also like walking my dogs.
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wonderful that she is still competing, I wish that so many of the Soviets could have continued, esp as they became better and better as dancers, I cried when Shaposhnikova quit as she was an excellent expressive dancer to begin with and improving still with wonderful choreography.
Wish there was more photos and vids of the best expressive soviet dancer/gymnast of all time, Natalia Frolova in SInfornio per un Addio.