The road to Paris has come to an end for the legendary Oksana Chusovitina after sustaining an injury in training at the Asian Championships, her last opportunity to qualify for the Olympic Games.
After missing out on Olympic qualification earlier this year via the apparatus World Cup series, Chusovitina was hoping to compete in front of a home crowd in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and finish as the highest eligible all-around athlete, which would have secured her a spot in her ninth Olympics.
"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," Chusotvitina wrote in an Instagram post. "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."
The 48-year-old has been to eight consecutive Olympics, starting in 1992 where she won a team gold medal as a member of the Unified Team. At the 2008 Beijing Games, she won a silver medal on vault while representing Germany. Chusovitina represented the nation from 2006 to 2012 while her son underwent treatment there for acute lymphocytic leukemia.
At Tokyo 2020, Chusovitina, then age 46, became the oldest female gymnast to compete at an Olympics.
Chusovitina had originally planned to retire following Tokyo, however, she later stated her plan to train for the 2022 Asian Games, which ended up getting postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chusovitina then decided to continuing training for Paris 2024.
Chusovitina has not revealed her future plans in the sport.