Legendary gymnast suffers injury that ends bid for ninth Olympics

For the first time since the final year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, a Summer Olympics will be staged without Oksana Chusovitina.

The 48-year-old Uzbek gymnast, who was vying for her ninth Olympic appearance this year in Paris, said Thursday that she suffered an injury that ends her dream. Chusovitina was set to compete this weekend in the Asian Gymnastics Championships — which are taking place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital city — where she needed to finish first in the all-around among athletes still eligible for an Olympic quota.

Saying in a social media post that she was injured while practicing her floor exercise, Chusovitina wrote: “I will not be able to take part and I am very upset as I have been preparing for this competition for a long time. I started doing all-around and I wanted to perform in our country, in front of our fans. But, unfortunately, tomorrow you will not see me among the participants.”

Chusovitina has long represented a remarkable exception to the rule in her sport, which usually features young competitors at its elite levels. For example, the median age of the women entered into the Tokyo Olympics for artistic gymnastics was 21, and was in the teens at the Summer Games from 1972 through 2016 (per NBC Sports).

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