Gymnastics is out of the question, obviously, though he's a big, big fan of the sport. The goliath of a man certainly has the strength – heck, the strength of an entire team or a small country – and what he does for a living requires considerable agility as well.

But c'mon.

Where are you going to find a horizontal bar or pommel horse that'll hold Igor Olshansky?

“I would like to think I'd be in some kind of Olympic competition,” said Olshansky, the Chargers' 6-foot-6, 309-pound defensive end, asked what he'd play if he still lived in Eastern Europe. “I just don't know what it would be.”

Where Olshansky was born, the ultimate in sports is not the Super Bowl, but the Olympic Games. He's been watching the Summer Games every night, along with many millions of other Americans, but there's a special tug when he sees an athlete in any sport who's wearing the blue-and-yellow of his native Ukraine.

“All of the former Soviet Union, really,” said Olshansky, the son of a former Russian Army basketball player. “We have similar backgrounds and similar ideals. And they all speak Russian. So many of the coaches were with the Soviet Union before the split, and some stayed, and some came to America. Have you seen Nastia (Liukin, U.S. gymnastics gold medalist, the Moscow-born daughter of a former Soviet gymnastics star)? She is Russian. So is Sasha (U.S. teammate Alexander Artemev, born in Belarus).”

Surely more suited to the Olympic power events – weightlifting, Greco-Roman wrestling perhaps? – Olshansky keeps his hands full enough with other fellows just as big and nearly as strong as him. There's absolutely nothing in the Olympics like pro football, though, and Olshansky's much-improved play last season helped get the Chargers as close as you can get to the NFL's version of the mountaintop.

“The first thing I want to do is help us win the Super Bowl, to win games and do whatever I can to help this team reach the big show,” said Olshansky, a Bay Area and University of Oregon product who was the first Soviet-born player drafted into the NFL. “That's most important. The rest will take care of itself.”

“The rest” is the business end of his sport. Olshansky is in the last year of his contract, and the way things are shaking out for the Chargers in both economic and personnel senses, possibly his last year with San Diego. Here or somewhere else, though, Olshansky will be a valuable entity if he can produce another season like 2007.

The best thing he did was stay on the field, stay available enough to start all 16 games on the right side, overcoming the injury bugaboo that had stilted his 2005 and '06 seasons after a strong rookie year. His performance was simply the result of “just playing healthy,” though he says he wasn't driven by the opportunity to finally prove what he could do.

“The coaches that scout me and the players that play me know,” said Olshansky. “As far as the media and everybody in the world, that really doesn't matter to me. They're going to look at stats and what other people say. I promise you, when that offensive coordinator is scouting me, he's got the respect. He knows that I come to play.”

Though Olshansky became more of a pass-rusher than before and recorded 3½ sacks last season, his forte is stopping the run, and he led the Chargers' defensive line with 69 tackles. Line coach Wayne Nunnely said Olshansky has “always had the mental makeup you want in a defensive lineman,” and indeed, he has learned to enhance his strength advantage with better technique at shedding blockers.

Quite visibly, Olshansky has braced himself for 2008. Twice. Despite the violence of their sport and the vulnerability of the human knee joint amid 22 torqued-up giants on a field 53 yards by 100 yards, few of the Chargers wear the braces on one knee, and fewer still wear the rig on both legs. Olshansky's just about the only one of the latter.

“Not everyone can do it,” said Olshansky, who began strapping on the braces late last year and feels they've already spared him more damage. “Your legs have to get used to them, but it's more a mental than a physical thing. When you put them on, you've got to push through them, train with them, and they'll take care of you. It just takes a mental commitment.”

Timing and logic would suggest that Olshansky's use of the extra protection, as advisable as the braces might be under any circumstances, has something to do with his contract situation and the uncertainty about next year. Most of the problems he had in '05 and '06 were knee-related, including a torn medial collateral ligament, and the braces might represent security.

According to Olshansky, however, the precaution measure is more personal than professional.

“It's a dangerous game,” said Olshansky. “When I look at defensive linemen or offensive linemen who've played 10 years, over 10 years, I look at their list of knee surgeries. I have a family, a young son, and I want to be able to play with him when I'm old. I want to be (much older) and walk around with no pain.”

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Chris Jenkins: (619) 293-1267; chris.jenkins@uniontrib.com