Athlete of the Week on RRI – Gymnast Catalina Ponor

Romanian gymnast Catalina Ponor last Friday won gold in the beam and floor finals in the International Indoor Championships help in Doha, which counted towards the World Challenge Cup.

Eugen Cojocariu, 03.04.2012, 17:11

Romanian gymnast Catalina Ponor last Friday won gold in the beam and floor finals in the International Indoor Championships help in Doha, which counted towards the World Challenge Cup. In the beam finals, Catalina ranked 1st with 15,300 points, followed by Ashleigh Brennan of Australia with 14,325 points and Marta Pihan-Kulesza of Poland with 13,900 points. Catalina Ponor won the floor event with a score of 15,275 points, followed by Romanian Diana Bulimar with 14,725 points and Yuyuan Jiang of China with 14,000 points.

Also in Thursday’s individual apparatus finals, Romanian Vlad Cotuna won bronze in the floor event. For her outstanding achievement, we have designated Catalina Ponor Athlete of the Week on RRI.

Catalina Ponor was born on August 20th 1987 in the south-eastern city of Constanta. She took up gymnastics early at merely 4 years of age and enrolled in the Farul Sports Club. In 2002 she was drafted into the extended team of Romania and started training in Deva. In 2003 she joined the Romanian women’s national team, and managed to produce a worldwide surprise at the World Indoor Championships in Anaheim, California, the US, where she won three silver medals in the teams all-round, beam and floor events the very same year. Prior to the US competition, Catalina’s results weren’t in the least indicative of her hidden potential. At the 2003 National Championships she had won bronze in the beam finals while at the International championships in Romania in 2004 she had improved her result by grabbing silver.

Catalina’s first moment of glory came at the European Championships held in Amsterdam in 2004 when she won no less than three gold medals, in the same events as in the Anaheim World Championships the previous year: in the team, beam and floor events.

The pattern repeated the next year at the Summer Olympics in Athens. With three Olympic gold medals, Catalina Ponor was rated the most medal-winning Romanian athlete at the Summer Olympics, and was subsequently designated best athlete of 2004 and best world gymnast the same year.

She continued her good run at the European Championships in 2005 and 2006, when she won gold in the beam event and at the World Championships in Stuttgart, where she won bronze in the team event. Catalina took a break from gymnastics but resumed training early last year after four years of absence.