Mother could tumble, jump and flip forever

Oksana Chusovitina with her silver medal of the vault final. REUTERS

NO matter how much her legs screamed or back ached, she couldn’t stop. Her son was dying, she had no insurance, so she couldn’t stop.

Gymnastics once saved Oksana Chusovitina. Now, she needed it to save her boy, stricken by leukemia, read a report in the New Jersey-based The Star Ledger.

“If I don’t compete, then my son won’t live,” German gymnast Chusovitina said after her son Alisher was diagnosed with cancer before his third birthday. “It’s as simple as that. I have no choice.”

It was 2002, and Chusovitina, a product of the former Soviet Union’s sports machine, had carved out a life as a gymnast for Uzbekistan. When her son fell ill, she moved to Germany, where better medical care saved him.

The story gripped the gymnastics world. Maybe that’s why Chusovitina, the first female gymnast to compete in five Olympics, heard an unmistakable roar on every tumbling pass and backflip from the thousands packed into National Indoor Stadium at the Beijing Games.

Chusovitina won her first individual medal on Sunday when she won the silver in vault. More than twice the age of many competitors, she has pushed her body beyond where it was meant to go.

Chusovitina helped the Unified Team win the team gold in Barcelona before the Soviet breakup set her on a different path. The cutting-edge Soviet training facilities were gone, replaced by inferior equipment in Uzbekistan.

Having been trained like men, she left her mark as one of the world’s top vaulters, winning eight of her 10 world titles on the apparatus.

Her body sometimes hurts, but “she doesn’t speak about pain,” German national coach Ursula Koch said, adding that she could tumble, jump and flip forever, or at least until 2012 in London.

生词：
apparatus 器械
leukemia 白血病
roar 吼叫
backflip 向后翻腾
tumbling 翻跟头

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