Granted, they stripped a lot of stuff from it which would need to be replaced but is thirty years old for a ship? How good was it when the Soviets built it? Are the ski-jump ramps a popular design?
Ski-ramps are not as capable as catapults when it comes to the ability of planes to take off with greater loads (of fuel and/or weapons). However only 3 countries currently use carriers that have catapults - the US, the French and the Brazilians.
There is some good (actually very good considering the person claims to be an amateur who put this together using available information and making the illustrations himself) information on aircraft carriers from around the globe.
Also, our own FReeper Jeff Head (copied) has a nice website that has information on various carriers.
Among the catapult users, only the US and France have enough spare power from their nuclear/steam engines to launch ‘heavy’ aircraft with weights of 20 or more tonnes. So that’s one reason why the Russians and Chinese have stuck with ski-jumps. I believe that the new electro-magnetic capapult system being developed for the USN would negate the need for nuclear power.