Asal Saparbaeva

Asal Saparbaeva was born on 7 February 1994 in Samarkand. She trained in artistic gymnastics, was a member of the Uzbekistan national team from 2007 and holds the title of Master of Sport of International Class. In the national team she was a teammate of the Olympic champion Oksana Chusovitina.

Her international results include a bronze medal in the team event at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, where the Uzbek women’s team finished third behind China and Japan. In 2011, at the Central and South Asian Championships in Dhaka, she won the floor exercise and the balance beam and took the all-around title. In 2014, at the World Challenge Cup stage in Anadia, Portugal, she won bronze on the uneven bars, sharing it with another gymnast.

She studied at the Uzbek State Institute of Physical Culture (2013–2017). By her own account she left professional sport in 2014, after emotional burnout and a run of injuries in the team; English Wikipedia dates the end of her career to 2015.

After gymnastics Asal practised wushu, then parkour, and performed pair shows with a partner, including stunts with fire; one summer they were invited to China, where the shows drew many thousands of spectators. When the pandemic lockdowns began, the team returned to Uzbekistan and began posting four or five videos a day; it was first called Uzduo and later took the name Littos, which she explains as an abbreviation of an English phrase about life, love and sport.

The blog became popular through the character of a “bride superhero” (kelinka) in national dress, who first appeared in an advertising clip for an Uzbek music group and won viewers over; the character was inspired by the effects and fight scenes of Marvel films. Asal posts as Littos on TikTok and Instagram, as well as on YouTube and Telegram; according to an interview, on 29 March 2022 she had 3.2 million followers on TikTok and 816 thousand on Instagram, and her most-watched video had 109 million views on TikTok. She says most of her income now comes from advertising.