Oksana Chusovitina of Uzbekistan competes during the women's gymnastics qualification round at the Tokyo Olympic Games at the Ariake Gymnastics Center in Tokyo, Japan on July 25, 2021. Photo: IC

Uzbek experienced gymnast ­Oksana Chusovitina has claimed another victory by a narrow margin in Baku, Azerbaijan, as she is also set to participate in the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games in September after announcing another comeback.

Grabbing a narrow victory against her competitors, Israel's Olympic champion Artem Dolgopyat, and Ukraine's Illia Kovtun, the 46-year-old Chusovitina claimed the victory in the vault on Saturday at the Artistic Gymnastics Apparatus World Cup. 

The eight-time Olympian has had a legendary career in gymnastics where she came back at least two times after repeatedly announcing to end her ­career in two Olympic Games in London 2012 and Tokyo 2020.

"I had been preparing for things to end here, but it's impossible to be fully ready for ending your career," said Chusovitina in July 2021 after she gained support in the Tokyo venues representing Uzbekistan. 

"I cried tears of happiness because so many people have supported me for a long time. These were tears of joy because so many people were supporting me."

Yet only two months after her announcement, Chusovitina decided one more goal for her career where she released the news to continue to compete for the Asian Games in 2022.

"I want to tell everyone that I have decided to prepare for the Asian Games 2022… I just can't finish my ­career without a medal for Uzbekistan," as she shared in an Instagram story in September 2021.

On average, gymnasts tend to be the youngest of all competitive sports who often retire young as well, most of which are in their late teens and mid 20s due to its intensive and high demanding training regime.

Yet Chusovitina has achieved record-shattering longevity in Olympic career of nearly 30 years since she won her first gold medal for the Unified Team at Barcelona in 1992.

In the decades of her elite gymnast career, Chusovitina has been competing for three teams, in addition to the Unified Team, the name used for the sports team of the former Soviet Union, she also competed for Germany and her country of birth - Uzbekistan.

Born in Bukhara, Uzbekistan in 1975, Chusovitina won her first-ever championship at an age of 13 at the USSR National Championships in the junior division, before she was admitted into a higher division.

Since then she has bagged two Olympic medals, the first gold in Barcelona 1992 and a silver in Beijing 2008, 11 medals for World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, two for Artistic Gymnastics World Cups, and eight in Asian Games competition which she will be seeking to add to in Hangzhou 2022.

When Chusovitina attended Rio 2016 where she ranked seventh place in the vault program, the winner at the time, Simone Biles from the US was 22 years younger than her, and even two years younger than Chusovitina's son.

But for Chusovitina who bears belief in this sport, "everyone is the same when standing on the podium no matter the winner in her 40s or a 16-year-old," she told media after she qualified for Tokyo 2020.