Romanian Gymnasts

Romanian gymnasts rose to prominence in 1976 with the Olympic gold medal performance of Nadia Comaneci, in Montreal. Although the country had performed before, the entry of the Romanian gymnast, Nadia Comaneci, on the world stage increased the visibility of the athletics and highlighted their coach, Bela Karolyi. It was his system of gymnastics – physical gymnastics, held responsible for the country’s early successes. He felt gymnasts needed to be artistically and technically beautiful. He also felt that they should be aggressive, daring, dynamic and powerful. He chose the youngest and the most audacious. These were girl gymnasts of an age where fear was not a constant awareness but an unknown entity in their lives.

The Karolyi system became synonymous with the Romanian team until Karolyi defected in 1981. While the male Romanian gymnasts continued to perform fairly adequately, the Romanian female gymnasts shone on the world stage, under the guidance of Karolyi and afterwards. In 1976, along with Nadia Comaneci and her perfect 10s, was Teodora Ungureanu with a bronze and a silver medal. In 1980, at Moscow, the most famous of Romanian gymnasts in these modern Olympic Games, Comaneci, came home with a gold medal for her floor exercise (a tie) and a gold medal on the balance beam. Romanians also won a silver and a bronze medal on the parallel bars and a bronze on the horse vault.

	More Info

Coaches replay these performances as part of several Romanian gymnast videos to point out where the female gymnasts succeed and try to inculcate into their own gymnasts the power seen on these tapes or Dvds. The strength of these gymnasts of Romania does not decrease over the years. In every Olympic Summer Games since 1976, Romanian women have taken home several medals. In 1984, in Seoul, the Romanian women won four gold, one silver and two bronze medals. At the next Olympic, in Los Angeles, Daniela Silva won in the floor exercise, on the balance beam and on the uneven bars, while Gabriela Potorac took a silver on the horse vault and a bronze on the balance beam. Daniela Silva also took home a bronze for the horse vault.

The winning ways of the Romanian women continued into the 1990s and into the 2000 Olympics at Sidney. The men won a gold in the pommel horse (Marius Daniel Urrica), but the women won the team as well as another gold and a silver. An incident, however, marred their performance. Andrea Raduca had won a gold in the all-around, but a drug test revealed she had taken a banned substance. She lost her medal but was exonerated of deliberate wrongdoing. The fault lay in a cough syrup she had taken.