Gymnastics: Oksana Chusovitina, Germany

In a gymnastics meet that has been littered with controversy about alleged underage gymnasts, a 33-year-old woman – oldest by a decade among gymnastics competitors in the Olympics – won a medal Sunday.

Oksana Chusovitina, a veteran of five Olympics who won a team gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics as part of what was called the Unified team from the old Soviet Union, earned an individual silver medal Sunday on the vault.

She is the mother of a 9-year-old boy who is in recovery from leukemia. The illness brought Chusovitina to Germany from her native Uzbekistan six years ago. Chusovitina competes for Germany because she was able to find treatment for her son there and also raise money for those treatments through clinics and exhibitions.

Even at her age in a young girls’ sport, Chusovitina says she is not done with the sport.

“I could go to London in 2012,” she said. “I will only be 37.”

Los Angeles Times