Athlete of the week – Gymnast Sabrina Voinea

Gold for Romania at the French International Gymnastics Championships

Florin Orban, 16.09.2025, 13:45

At the end of last week, the world’s artistic gymnastics elite gathered in Paris for the French Internationals. The competition was also the penultimate stage of the World Cup season. It was a useful test ahead of the upcoming World Championships, scheduled for October in Indonesia. Romania was represented by three athletes: Miruna Botez, Bianca Vișovan, and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea. Sabrina performed the best, winning the gold medal in the floor exercise competition, and Radio Romania International named her Athlete of the Week.

In the qualifiers, Sabrina Maneca Voinea made it to the floor final, her favourite apparatus, with the highest score: 13.633. She ranked ninth in the vault, making her the first reserve for the final. However, she failed her beam routine and was eliminated from the final. None of her teammates present in Paris managed to qualify. In the floor final, Sabrina did even better, scoring even higher: 13.800. She was followed by Russia’s Angelina Melnikova with 13.400, and the bronze medal went to Finland’s Kaia Tanskanen with 13.366.

Sabrina Maneca Voinea was born in Constanța (eastern Romania) on June 4, 2007. Her mother and coach, Camelia Voinea, was a high-level gymnast who won the gold medal with the Romanian team at the 1987 World Championships in Rotterdam and the silver medal at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. Sabrina’s first major achievement was winning the bronze medal at the 2023 European Championships in Antalya, on the floor. In 2024, at the continental championships hosted by Italy in Rimini, she won silver in the floor exercise and parallel bars. At the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, she came in fourth in the floor exercise, losing points due to a refereeing error that was later seen on the video analysis of the exercise. (MI)