By TANYA TITOVA
CHATEAUROUX, France (AP) — After 10 Olympics and 36 years, Nino Salukvadze says she’s finally done.
The pistol shooter from Georgia has been ever-present at the Summer Olympics since Seoul in 1988, when she competed for what was still the Soviet Union. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, she became the first female athlete to compete at the Games 10 times.
In that time, the 55-year-old has seen the Games become bigger and more professionalized and says the competition is tougher than ever.
Salukvadze considered retiring after her first Olympics, after she’d won gold and silver medals as a 19-year-old. She nearly walked away in the 1990s, when she struggled to support her family financially in newly independent Georgia. She announced her retirement after the Tokyo Games in 2021.
This time, though, she says she is done “for sure.”
Coming to the Paris Olympics was about honoring her father, Vakhtang, who was also her coach. After the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, he talked her out of retirement for one last push.
“He was my mentor not only in sports, but also in life. He was a wise man,” she told The Associated Press in the city of Chateauroux, near the Olympic shooting range, on Friday after her last competition.
“He never asked for anything in his life. We had the kind of relationship where we understood each other just with our eyes,” Salukvadze said.
“‘If you quit sports, you can’t come back. Just try,’” she recalled her father saying. “It was the only favor he asked me for his whole life. I thought he perhaps wouldn’t be able to ask again. I gathered all my strength, for his sake.”
Salukvadze’s father died earlier this year at the age of 93, but he lived to see his daughter qualify for a spot for Georgia.
From her 10 Olympics, Salukvadze has three medals: one gold, one silver and one bronze. In Paris, she placed 38th in the 10-meter air pistol event and 40th in the 25-meter pistol, meaning she didn’t reach a televised final.
Salukvadze’s last Olympic medal — and her first for an independent Georgia — was in Beijing in 2008. At the time, Georgia was at war with neighboring Russia. Salukvadze won bronze and embraced Russian silver medalist Natalia Paderina on the podium in what was widely seen as a gesture for peace.
Salukvadze may not be totally done with the Olympics yet. She’s a coach at her own shooting club back home in Georgia and is a vice president of the national Olympic committee.
Salukvadze’s record 10th Olympic appearance was recognized by the International Olympic Committee.
“IOC President Thomas Bach has sent his congratulations to Nino Salukvadze in a letter and we understand that the International Shooting Sport Federation is holding an event to honor this achievement,” the IOC told the AP in an emailed statement.
Even after 36 years, nothing quite matches the feeling of winning an Olympic gold medal as a teenager back in 1988.
“When I won at the Olympics and stood on the podium, it was indescribable,” she said. Even now, Salukvadze added, “I can evoke these feelings in myself in the same way, feel it just the same.”
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
