Eight Olympics and a Reason to Keep Going: Chusovitina and Purpose in Life

Barcelona, 1992. A seventeen-year-old gymnast, Oksana Chusovitina, takes part in her first Olympics and wins team gold with the Unified Team. Almost thirty years go by. Tokyo, July 2021: she is forty-six and steps onto the floor for her eighth Olympics, the first gymnast ever to do so. In between she competed under three different flags: the Unified Team, Uzbekistan and Germany.

It was not only training that kept her going. In 2002 her son, then three years old, fell seriously ill and the family moved to Germany for his treatment; gymnastics also became a way to support it. A big, everyday reason that made it make sense to get up every morning.

What keeps a person going for so long? Psychological research points to one possible lead: purpose in life. In 2014 Patrick Hill and Nicholas Turiano published in Psychological Science a study using data from the American MIDUS sample (Midlife in the United States). With proportional-hazards models they found that people with a sense of purpose lived longer during the 14 years after the baseline assessment, even when other markers of psychological and affective well-being were taken into account.

According to the authors, this advantage did not seem to depend on the participants' age, on how long they lived during the follow-up period, or on whether they had retired: purpose appears to protect across the whole of adult life.

A few cautions. This is an observational study: it shows an association, not proof that having a purpose makes people live longer. I read the abstract and not the full paper. And the study says nothing about athletes or about Chusovitina: the parallel is ours.

What can we do with it? These are our own common-sense ideas, not findings of the study. Ask yourself what gets you out of bed even when it is hard: a job, a person, a hobby, a cause. If you do not know, try writing down three things you really care about and pick the one you will give ten minutes to today. Purpose does not have to be as big as eight Olympics: it can be small and yours.

And you, what is the thing you care about enough to look after it again today? Tell us in the comments: I am curious to read your answers.

Sources

• Hill, P. L., Turiano, N. A. (2014), “Purpose in Life as a Predictor of Mortality Across Adulthood”, Psychological Science. DOI 10.1177/0956797614531799
• “Oksana Chusovitina”, English Wikipedia entry (accessed 31 October 2026)