Oksana Chusovitina is a legend of gymnastics, having competed in eight consecutive Olympic Games from 1992 to 2021, a feat no other female gymnast has achieved. She won team gold at her debut Olympics in Barcelona 1992 with the Unified Team, and vault silver at Beijing 2008 representing Germany, 16 years later. Her career stands as a rare tale of longevity, marked by representation of three different nations: the Unified Team, Uzbekistan, and Germany. She was forty and not done yet!

Even in her 40s, she was competing at the top level: 5th place on vault at London 2012, vault final at Rio 2016, and at Tokyo 2020, she became the oldest female Olympic gymnast ever at 46. Though she didn’t qualify for the final, her performance earned a tearful standing ovation. She had won a bronze medal on vault at 47 years old, competing in the 2023 Cottbus World Cup. And all of this does not surprise you enough, know that her early career days were the same as those of Simone Biles.

In an interview, Olympic champion Tatiana Gutsu sat down with Oksana Chusovitina on July 25, where the latter confessed, “And when I began to compete, there were different sorts of competitions arranged back then for junior athletes of various stages in their development. And when I competed for the first time, I fell off the beam five times, and that was never discouraging to me. I just liked doing what I was doing.” While it is quite hard to find that one meet in particular, Chusovitina had started young, and by the time she was 15, she was already a part of the USSR team.

Only makes sense for her to be young and make mistakes in her debut, much like Simone Biles. In The Balance: My Years Coaching Simone Biles, coach Aimee Boorman recounts a little-known story from Simone Biles’ second-ever gymnastics meet. “She [Simone] was joking around a little bit before she saluted, and on her first run, she sprinted down the runway but tried to stop herself at the last second, threw her hands in front of her body, belly slid on the vault, but didn’t actually go over the vault table. Zero,” she wrote.

Yup, you heard that one right. Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast of all time, once got a zero on vault. On her second try, Simone gave it her all and launched over the vault without touching it, earning “another zero.” While this definitely did draw a parallel between the early days of Biles and Oksana, the latter had a wish for the American.

Oksana Chusovitina wants Simone Biles in LA 2028

Back in 2024, before the Paris Olympics, Oksana gave an exclusive interview to EssentiallySports where she talked of her ambition to have the GOAT of gymnastics in the City of Angels. “Simone Biles is a very talented gymnast; perhaps nothing is impossible for her, including performing at the Games in Los Angeles. Everything depends only on her. For my part, I wish her to perform brightly in Paris and delight fans of her talent as much as possible with her bright performances,” she said back then.

She dominated at the 2024 Paris Olympics, helping Team USA to gold, winning individual all-around and vault golds, and adding a floor exercise silver, finishing with four medals. Next stop might be LA? Biles herself has left the door open to the possibility of returning for the 2028 Olympics held in her home country, but she remains deeply uncertain. Speaking with L’Équipe, she revealed how the physical toll of the 2024 Paris Games hit her hard—recalling how her body “literally collapsed” and she was sick for 10 days afterward. While she will be present at the Los Angeles Games, whether she’ll compete or attend as a supporter is still undecided. What do you think? Will she compete?