Olympic Update

Newsroom, 16.08.2016, 12:51

Romanian women’s gymnastics is going through
difficult times. This is the first edition of the Summer Olympic Games in the
past 40 years that brings no medal to a Romanian woman gymnast. Catalina Ponor
was Romania’s only representative in the women’s gymnastics competition in Rio.
She managed to qualify only to the beam event finals, where she ranked 7th,
that is on the last but one place.

In spite of this performance, Catalina Ponor
remains one of the greatest gymnasts Romania has ever had. At the 2004 Summer
Olympics in Athens, with three gold medals, Catalina Ponor was the most
appreciated athlete of the Romanian delegation, being later designated best
Romanian athlete and best female gymnast of 2004. At the 2012 Summer Olympics
in London, Catalina grabbed silver in the floor event, and bronze with
Romania’s women’s gymnastics team.

In men’s gymnastics, Romanian Marian
Dragulescu failed to win a medal in the vault event, by a narrow margin, and
came in fourth. He tied for third place with Kenzo Shirai of Japan, but lost
the tiebreaker. They both scored 15.449 points, but Shirai’s best score of his
two vaults was higher than Dragulescu’s best score, so it was Shirai who
received the bronze. This is not a first for Dragulescu, who will turn 36 in
December. He failed to win a gold medal in the floor event in Athens, after he
tied with Canadian Kyle Shewfelt. Back then, both received 9.787 points.

Coming
back to Rio 2016, we should say that so
far Romania has got four Olympic medals: gold by Romania’s women’s epee fencing
team, silver in men’s tennis doubles, bronze in men’s 85 kg weightlifting and
another bronze in women’s coxed eight rowing.