Last night I turned on the TV and caught some of the women's gymnastics. They were doing the vault final and they kept cutting to this girl walking around. Only, she wasn't like the other girls. She seemed to have a more calm, more mature air about her. I thought to myself, 'hey, she's kind of cute', then the commentators starting talking about her. She's this 33 year old woman competing for Germany and she ended up getting the Silver medal for the vault competition. I was like, wow, a 33 year old getting an olympic medal for gymnastics is amazing. It just doesn't happen. So I was already thinking, 'this girl's my new hero' and told Emily about it this morning. Turns out she knew about it too, only she had heard the whole story.
It turns out that the woman (Chusovitina Oksana) was a Russian gymnist when she was about 19. Since then she's gotten married and had a son. Her son developed leukemia and the hospital told her they didn't have room for him so she'd just have to watch him die. Well, like any parent, you just can't take that for an answer. Especially when you know leukemia is treatable. So she called one of the coaches in Germany and asked for help. The coach got her on the German team so she could compete. Her son was able to get health care and is now in remission.
This woman went and did something that very few women her age could do, and not only saving her sons life, brought back a silver medal, proving that being 33 isn't old. She's an inspiration to people to not give up something you enjoy just because people say you can't do it. And she's going to be a personal hero to her son.
And she's not bad on the eyes. I know, I'm an evil, evil person.
Monday, August 18, 2008
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2 comments:
I thought her story was awsome! I don't think she is married though - oh well. Congratulations to her for never giving up on her dream and proving you are never too old to be great at something. There is still hope for me to learn to play the piano.
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