COLOGNE: It is hard not to feel a lump in your throat when listening to Oxana Chusovitina tell the heart-breaking story of how she ended up in Germany.

The 32-year-old gymnast is heading to her fifth Olympics in August as the reigning European vault champion and will compete for Germany, the third country she has represented. She first marched under the banner of the former Soviet Union’s Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and then competed for Uzbekistan in Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000 and Athens four years ago. Chusovitina moved to Germany for one reason — to save the life of her son Alisher.

He was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukaemia at the age of three in 2002. There were no specialist oncology facilities in Uzbekistan and Chusovitina’s family had no
health insurance.

So Chusovitina, who won an Olympic team gold in 1992 and eight world championships on the vault, went west for treatment and was welcomed in 2002 in Germany, where donations were raised to help fight her son’s cancer. She also put her nominal prize money towards covering costs. “My son is my whole life,” Chusovitina said in an interview after a high-energy 90-minute training session in her adopted home of Cologne.

“I know every mother says that. But our bond is special. When he was ill I was devastated. He’s my motivation.”

Chusovitina has defied conventional wisdom that gymnastics is a sport for teenagers. The only woman gymnast to appear at four Olympics, she has leaped over the age barrier and acknowledges her son’s battle with cancer played a role in that. “I’m fortunate to be able to continue in a sport I love so much,” said Chusovitina. “And I can’t tell you how grateful I am to everyone who helped.”

She sometimes took part in all four women’s apparatus disciplines at tournaments, rather than focus on one or two, to increase her chances of winning prize money. “The whole world helped,” she said.

A warm smile spreads across the face of the gymnast, who weighs 44 kg and stands just 1.53 metres tall, when she talks about her son’s improved health.

He is doing well, leading the life of an eight-year-old German boy, and he now needs only quarterly blood analyses. “My heart doesn’t ache any more the way it did because I can see he is healthy,” said Chusovitina, who obtained German citizenship in 2006. “He does everything other children do and sometimes he comes to gymnastics training with other children.”