All hail Oksana Chusovitina, vaulting back to her seventh Olympics

There will be gymnasts in Rio de Janeiro this summer who weren't even born yet when Oksana Chusovitina began her Olympic journey as a gold medalist at Barcelona 24 years ago.

At age 40, Uzbekistan's Chusovitina on Sunday qualified for her seventh Summer Olympics, a record for the sport. She'll be 41 by the time the Games roll around, and in a sport where teenaged prodigies come and go Chusovitina has kept going through six injuries and in a collection of national team uniforms that read like a map of post-Cold War Europe, including the Unified Team of former Soviet republics that won the gold in '92 and including Germany, for whom she won a silver medal at Beijing, the old CIS, her native land, and all the way back to the Soviet Union in 1990.

"I have lots of energy left inside of me and I can still win a medal," she told Houston's KHOU-TV before this week's gymnastics test event in Rio, a competition that yielded more than its share of history in that she finished her vault specialty just behind Dipa Karmakar, India's first female Olympic gymnast and a mere sprite of 22.

"I see all these girls as my competitors," Chusovitina added. "Nobody gives scores for an age - everybody gives scores for your gymnastics."