Uctas training at the Genclik Merkezi club in the northern city of Bolu. She said she “fell in love” with the sport at age 5.
BOLU, Turkey — In this mountain city, cows meander on a dirt road behind the training center where Goksu Uctas, Turkey’s first Olympic gymnast, works on a four-inch balance beam.
Five years ago, Uctas and the Turkish gymnastics program were barely on the map. But after a successful showing in January at London’s Olympic test event, Uctas, 22, earned a berth to the Games’ all-around final.
“I always dreamed I would go to the Olympics,” she said, sitting on the floor exercise carpet during a break from training. “I am honored to represent Turkey, to be the first.”
Her inclusion in the Olympics signifies a turning point for the sport. The international gymnastics federation is using London to expand its global reach, by including more solo athletes from countries like Turkey and Vietnam, which is represented by Phan Thi Ha Thanh, the 2011 world vault bronze medalist.
As part of that quest, the international federation decided to cut the size of teams to five gymnasts from six, limiting the number of athletes sent from traditional powers. Some have argued that the move takes away spots from more qualified athletes.
Indeed, Uctas’s routines are unlikely to land her on the medals podium — her levels of difficulty are several points below those of the top gymnasts. Her Yurchenko vault features one and a half twists, compared with at least two for each American vaulter. But her victory is the trip itself.
At home, the wispy, 5-foot-2 Uctas has been successful in shifting attention to gymnastics in a country where weight lifters and wrestlers reign supreme in Olympic years. Giant posters bearing her image are displayed in Bolu.
She is sponsored by the British oil company BP and has been profiled by Turkish Vogue, pictured leaping above a beam in diaphanous gymnastics couture. Recognized on the street while running errands, “I know now that they know me,” she said.
Far from home, she has had to fight the stereotypes that come with a Muslim who performs in a leotard while representing a Muslim country. At the 2007 European championships in Amsterdam, “one of the German coaches came over and asked if she can really wear a leotard, in Turkey, at 17,” her longtime coach, Mergul Guler, said. “They thought she was running around training in a head scarf.”
But during a light pre-Olympic workout, Uctas was in the traditional leotard and shorts, showing off her lean, balletic frame.
Guler said Uctas has the one trait that cannot be taught, one that will help her battle the pressure in London.
“She knows how to compete,” Guler said. “When I see her attitude before an event, I already know how she’ll do.”
The night before a competition, “I talk with God,” Uctas said. “I ask him to help me.”
Despite her current serenity, the road to London was rocky.
Uctas said she “fell in love” with gymnastics at age 5, when her family lived in the southeast city of Gaziantep. At 9, they were forced from their home by an earthquake that struck northwest Turkey. They spent a year living in a crowded refugee camp, where she practiced simple moves — headstands and flips — outside the tents.
Afterward, she moved to Bolu to train under Guler, the head coach at the Genclik Merkezi club. (Uctas’s training is subsidized by the Turkish government.)
She was expected to compete in Beijing in 2008 but was sidelined by a leg injury. Last year, a painful neck injury almost finished Uctas’s career.
“The doctor said she would have to stop gymnastics,” Guler said. “She was afraid to do any of her tricks. We have had many moments like this. She’s been afraid of the vault. It’s psychological.”
For eight months, Uctas had physical therapy almost daily before re-emerging in August at the Ghent Challenger Cup in Belgium. She fell on every apparatus.
“She had lost all motivation,” Guler said.
A lifelong goal of competing at the Games — she wears the Olympic rings on a necklace and drew them on her bedroom wall — helped her get back on track. So did encouragement from Vanessa Ferrari, the 2006 world all-around champion from Italy, whom Uctas has visited to train with a few times.
By October, Uctas performed well enough at the world championships in Tokyo to be invited to the Olympic test event.
There, Uctas performed in vault, beam, floor exercise and uneven bars, her weakest event, without major error. Based on those scores, the gymnastics federation granted her an Olympic berth.
Upon hearing the news, she said, “We jumped up and down and screamed.”
In London, she will live in the Olympic Village, where she is most excited to meet the sprinter Usain Bolt and N.B.A. basketball stars.
It will be a welcome break from a regimented life in Bolu, where she lives in a dormitory across the street from the gym. She trains twice a day, six days a week. Uctas shares a bedroom with the club’s two other elite gymnasts. Though they claim not to be concerned about weight, a scale sits prominently in the center of the room, a tub of protein powder on the dresser.
Uctas left Bolu on a brutally hot afternoon, en route to Istanbul and a banquet for athletes with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The flight to London left the next day.
Although it was the first week of the holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims abstain from all food and drink until sundown, Guler said, “There’s no Ramadan for gymnasts.”
