ROMANIAN GYMNASTIC – WHERE TO? – PART III

RETIREMENTS 

As Nicolae Forminte said in an interview he gave to Ring newspaper, “every gymnast feels the need to retire after she wins one or two Olympic medals”. Which is the case in the national team.

Since the London Olympics, Romania has lost three of its best gymnasts while the fourth is being in dilemma. Amelia Racea, Diana Chelaru and the five time Olympic champion Catalina Ponor have chosen to end their carrier. As for Catalina, a retirement was somehow expected, but Amelia’s and Diana’s retirement, was out of the blue . The fourth gymnast who indirectly announced her retirement is Olympic vault champion Sandra Izbasa. However, she is still in dilemma on whether to retire or not.

In today’s article we bring you the story of the retirement of the five gymnasts.

Amelia Racea 

Amelia Racea

At only 18 years old, the European gold medalist on beam in 2010 chose to retire so she can dedicate herself to college as she in freshman year at UNEFS Bucharest. Her last performance was in Ulm, April 2012, where Romania reached the first place ahead of Great Britain and Germany. Speaking about her decision a member of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation said: “It was her decision, she had no heath problem, she just doesn’t enjoy doing the sport like before. she can’t continue doing gymnastics like that. We are deeply sorry for her decision.”

Quietly Amelia Racea announced her retirement. Her retirement was hard on all her fans and supporters. According to GymFever she has always done her routines technically correct, although she was not considered artistic, but her earnestness and perseverance were always something to admire.

Her career as a senior, started with a success but later was marked by numerous injuries which hindered her progress in the sport. Amelia admitted on „The Medal Factory” that she used to have a hard time in recovering from her injuries. At the end a back pain was enough for her which is another reason for her to retire from the sport, the sport she has been doing since being a six year old.

                                                                                        Diana Chelaru

Diana Chelaru

The Olympic team bronze medalist shocked everybody when she decided to leave the national team to train in her hometown of Onesti. Three months after the Olympics, she was the first Romanian Olympian to say goodbye to gymnastic leaving behind 15 years of gymnastics. Chelaru managed to achieve some of her goals, while the other goals will forever remain just a dream. Even though she said that she did not choose gymnastics at the beginning , she eventually fell in love with it, the sport which brought her worldwide fame. Diana chose to end her gymnastics career right where she started.

In an interview she gave to ProSport she said that she felt she couldn’t handle the new training system in the national team “After the Olympics I gained some extra pounds and it was getting harder and harder for me to keep up the pace, I was risking an injury.” She also mentioned that it was hard for her to change her routines according to the new code of points. Regarding her carrier Diana mentioned that she finished her carrier exactly as she started it with a silver medal “I think silver is my medal, for me silver is my gold”.

In her last interview during the Nationals in Onesti, she said that she leaves a door open, that she won’t be leaving gymnastics, revealing her plan for her post retirement life “I am not leaving gymnastics, I’ll continue to go to the gym because I’m a very active person. I will also help the young gymnasts because I want to become a coach”.

Catalina Ponor

No need for the introduction, as she is already an international star known worldwide. After the London Olympics, she announced that she will end her gymnastics carrier, but one month later as she come back in the gym she gave the impression that she will continue. In an interview given for Medal Factory she said that she has consider many aspects before taking her decision “I need to pay attention to some other things as my health, how quickly I can recover and if I’ll manage to recover because I am 25 years old now I am not 15 or 16 anymore when my body used to recover quicker than now”.

Catalina Ponor

Although she said that she will announce her decision in December, Catalina announced her official retirement in November “I am really retiring. I have to perform at the last two galas and then I will retire, even though I will miss gymnastics . The moment has come to do something else with my life. I will let the younger gymnast continue doing what I and the others golden generations of Romanian gymnastic have done in our time which is performance at the highest point”.

Even though she retired, Catalina said she will still be involved with gymnastics, as she would like to become a coach, but that is not the only plan she’s got. “ I’ve said many times that I would like to coach. I’ve done this job before and I liked it a lot. I also got other plans, that I will not speak about right now. It’s better for things to come at their rightful time. I would wish to meet talented little girls, with ambition and willing to do a performance which could surpass mine”

Catalina Ponor has a total of 5 Olympic medals, 3 gold medals in Athens in 2004 (with the team, on beam and floor), and 2 in London, a bronze medal with the team and a silver one on floor. At World championships she manage to get 5 medals as well, 3 silver and 2 bronze, and at the Europeans she’s gathered 10 medals including golds.

Sandra Izbasa

The two time Olympic champion has put her mark in the history of Romanian gymnastic when she won the gold medal on Vault in London at her second Olympics in a row.

In her case it is not yet know, if she will continue or not in gymnastics, since we are all waiting for her decision, which it will eventually come.

A month after the London Olympics, Sandra returned to the gym, but without giving a concrete answer about her future in gymnastics. According to ProSport, there were rumors that saying that she will continue her carrier so she could  participate at the World Championships in 2013, hoping that she will win the single medal that she missed. The news haven’t been confirmed by Sandra as she was saying that she wishes to take everything step by step, that she doesn’t want to make any plans for the future.

Regarding her plans and her training progress, in an episode of Medal Factory, Andreea Raducan asked her what is her “secret plan” if she will be competing in 2013 and Sandra answered “I don’t know exactly yet. What’s important is my recovery. Right now I am on a recovering period, but I could say that I handle it pretty well on floor, and less on vault because we moved in a new gym and I was used to the one in Izvorani, but I do my best to make my vaults exactly as I was training them in Izvorani, all thou it will be a little bit hard, but on floor I recovered much faster. Now I am doing beam routines only to recover on those two apparatus, but for this year I only got floor and vault. As for the next year, I honestly don’t know because there will be only individual competition, maybe I’ll go whit only two apparatus, surely I won’t do bars anymore, finally, not because I don’t want that but I had enough at the Olympics, as for future plans I will take everything step by step because if I make plans they never fulfill, it had some bad experience before and I won’t do that again”.

Sandra Izbasa

In November, at ProSport gala, Sandra said that she wishes to spend more time whit her parents, leading to the speculations that she was in fact announcing her retirement indirectly. “It’s not about that I’m not feeling respected, literally there isn’t any motivation left. I’m not saying that I’m old, for gymnastics I mean, but like I said, I want to dedicate myself to my family, because I’ve spend 10 years away from them, and as long as they are still alive, I wish to be close to them”

Furthermore, at the same gala, in the interview she gave to ProSport she said that she would love to continue in gymnastics but she is also thinking about retirement. About her decision she said that balance is equal 50/50 and she will have to analyse what is in her best interest “Sure, gymnastics will always be in my heart, because I’ve done it for 18 years, and it’s hard to say goodbye and it will remains in my soul forever, all thou someday I will have to retire from this sport”.

If she is to retire, Sandra said on different occasions that she doesn’t wish to become a coach, despite the fact that she admits she has the necessary skills. “I do consider that I’ve spend enough years in the gym and I don’t think that I would got the nerves to continue still in the gym. I really think  that I got the skills to becoming a pretty good coach because considering the fact that I’ve spend so much time whit some extraordinary coaches inevitable you steal a thing or two so I could do this job but no, I prefer to do something else I consider that I am capable of doing much more interesting things”.

For more details about Sandra interviews check here and here.

Despite these sad retirements, the Romanian national team still got good some very good gymnasts which will be the subject for our next post.

Special thanks as always to @WOGymnastike and @GigiKhazback

ROMANIAN GYMNASTIC: WHERE TO? – PART II

Temporality conditions or the imminent leave of Bellu and Bitang

All thou Mariana Bitang and Octavian Bellu announced at the end of august that they are willing to continue coaching the national team, in October they changed their point of view, bestowing an essential condition of their commitment, the national team stays in Bucharest. Octavian Bellu felt the need to clarify their demands in an interview he gave to MEDIAFAX “The whole situation is about a reconstruction that is needed to be done after the Olympic Games. To be able to continue coaching and to be able offer the girls the best conditions we need to have a training gym hall in Bucharest and I’m not saying this because we want it as an essential condition. Let us not forget that Mariana and I spend more than 25 years in a hotel room in Deva. We only wanted to do gymnastics and nothing mattered at that time. We could have carried on in Izvorani, but we have couches alongside us and they have kids and they still have a social life. Besides there we couldn’t have a proper education program, school was out of the question. Of course parents didn’t enjoy the situation, and we have to consider that the national team will be soon added whit juniors which they have only one goal besides gymnastics and that’s school”.

The Dinamo Gym Hall in it’s current state

Bellu also added the isolation of Izvorani, 30 km from Bucharest as being one of the main reasons of moving the national team to Bucharest. “The gym in Izvorani is not supplied with a Health Clinic so if anything happens, it’s hard to get to Bucharest . In winter we got stuck on the road to Bucharest for seven hours, because of the snow, and we had a gymnast with us”

Since Izvorani is out of the question, Bucharest remains the only place that will keep the two couches at the of the national team. The Romanian Federation along with all whom are involved in gymnastic had made lots of promises but none of them were kept so far. “We can’t put a deadline on when the gym will be ready, but it is clear that we can’t continue in this provisional form, which in my opinion can take up to 2 or 3 month, maybe 5 but not more. On the other hand, any gym hall that will be developed for us in Bucharest, will remain for gymnastics” said Octavian Bellu.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the two coaches already have set their sights on Dinamo club gym hall, but in order for the gym to become a proper training one, it requires some essential repairs. Regarding this subject Ms. Bitang said “In order to be used as a high standard training gym it needs an entire wall to be moved 10 meters backwards and the windows to be changed”.

Furthermore, the two coaches stated that the technical problem of the gym halls, the uncertainties and the unfulfilled promises from the Federation could lead them into leaving the women’s national team for the second time.

Mariana Bitang closely watching the girls

Marina Bitang pointed out the main problem of their dissatisfaction which is the impossibility of the coaches and gymnasts do their job and at the same time have a personal life. Even if the first steps in obtaining the approval for the expansion of the Dinamo gym hall were made almost a year ago, the problem remains still unresolved. “It’s a necessity as we are still sharing the gym with the men’s national team. This is the subject we need to discuss, because we can’t offer proper training programs for both teams. it has been almost a year since we have asked for extension of the gym hall. The extensions are really necessary because in the current form there is no space for a gymnast to do a proper vault. We didn’t ask for comfort, we didn’t ask for any money, we didn’t ask for a new gym hall, we just wanted two walls to be built. We’re still waiting for the extensions to start” said Mariana Bitang during an interview.

The only solution that the Romanian Federation proposed, was moving back to Deva, but the coaches who brought no more than 300 medals for the Romanian gymnastic, didn’t approve of the federation’s offer. At Sport Total FM, Mariana Bitang revealed her motives in which she and Octavian Bellu won’t be going back to Deva “The Romanians authorities must understand that if they do something, it won’t be for Bellu and Bitang, it will be done for the Romanian gymnastic. We didn’t ask any kind of wage, as we didn’t ask for any extra equipment which will be transported to Dinamo once the hall will be ready. We had a discussion with the Federation and they came up with the proposal of moving back to Deva. There the girls could resume their training, but without us and I am saying this with all my sorrow. The fact that we don’t want to go back to Deva shouldn’t be seen by the Romanians authorities as a punishment, we did pay our tribute, Deva took us 25 years of our lives. I personally can’t find any reason to go back there to live in a school home room. Things have changed over the years, now I have other engagements, I have a home now and a child that I need to take care of”

Going back to Deva will not only bring the departure of Bellu and Bitang, but will open the door for certain and further retirements which will be the subject for another post.

– TO BE CONTINUED –

Special thanks to @GigiKhazback and @WOGymnastike

ROMANIAN GYMNASTIC: WHERE TO? – PART I

 

London 2012

Almost four months have passed since the London Olympic Games and the Romanian gymnastics is struggling with doubts,uncertainties, retirements and threats which has been circulating recently in the women’s gymnastics national team. From moving the training ground from Izvorani to Bucharest to the retirement of Romania’s best gymnasts, here is an article analyzing all of this.

Moving from Izvorani

Olympic gym „Sydney 2000” which is named after the Sydney Olympics where the Romanian gymnastics team made history, is the largest gymnastics training gym in Romania. With the Romanians success at the Olympics, the fan base has grown enormously.

The training center is designed to international standards that can provide all the necessary facilities for high training performance for almost all sports.
For almost two years, the Olympic center “Sydney 2000” based in Izvorani, has been the home of the women’s national team. There the girls had everything they needed from modern training gym, modern hotel rooms to cable TV, cable internet to wireless and recreational centers.

The Olympic Complex „Sydney 2000” Izvorani

However, the biggest problem of the Olympic gym is its own solitude as Mariana Bitang stated in an interview not long ago. “We lost our doctor, our nurse and now our physiotherapist […] no one is willing to commute for a small salary”. But that was not the only reason which had the coaches determinate to leave Izvorani as there was another one regarding school and education programs. Speaking about this subject Mariana Bitang stated “Back in Izvorani we had some troubles whit school. We don’t want to repeat the episode from this summer when two gymnasts failed to pass their final high school exams. Besides in a few weeks the national team will be added whit the juniors which still have school obligations and we just can’t afford to removed them for their educational programs”

Moving the team to Bucharest was not a problem. The biggest problem was finding a training gym equipped to the highest standards, the thing which seemed to be trickery. The girls moved temporary to Lia Manoliu sportive gym where they share the gym with the men’s national team. The situation was a half-measured one as the coaches had already put their eyes on the Dinamo Club gym hall. As that gym fulfills the needs and necessities of the coaches and the girls since is located near two hospitals and many schools, however the hall requires some major repairs.
As the gym hall is the propriety of Ministry of Internal Affairs, getting the repairs done is a tricky thing. Bitang and Bellu received positive answers and many promises regarding the repairs.
As they are all, coaches and gymnasts, currently still waiting for the repairs to start, the women’s national team is still training in Lia Manoliu gym, which brings us to the second part of the problem.

– TO BE CONTINUED –

Special thanks to @GigiKhazback for the support.