"I'm at peace with myself"

PS: Did you expect this decision?
AR: Honestly no. I'm extremely disappointed, and I was hoping things will work out.
PS: If you were judging your case, what would you have done?
AR: I don't know. I'm still too young (to judge that), I'll be 17 Saturday. I can't judge in their place. I do know I didn't do anything wrong, and I don't understand why I had to give back my medal. All I did is take a cold pill, which didn't help me at all during competition. It actually made me feel weak and dizzy. That's probably how things always happens: children have to pay for the adults' mistakes.
PS: How do you feel now?
AR: I'm calm and at peace with myself. I'm glad my teammates & I performed well in the team competition, that we won the Olympic title, and I get to keep the silver on vault.
PS: What memories do you have left from Sydney?
AR: I'll only remember the good things that happened in Sydney,. I want to go home and forget about the bad things. We won medals, we did everything that was expected of us; there's no reason why we should remember anything else.
PS: Did you ever think about retiring?
AR: I won't do any such thing. On the contrary, I want to keep competing, to prove a good gymnast, and I didn't win my title because of some pill I took.
PS: Do you know people in Romania streets to show their support?
AR: I found out about that, and I want to thank them for being there for me. It means a lot to me. And, I also wanted to thank someone else, Mr. Ion Tiriac, who was very nice towards me. he could have just said "This is life. they took your medal away, there's nothing we can do." But he fought for me; he wanted to prove my innocence.
PS: How do you think things will turn out when you go back to Barlad?
AR: The people there know me, and they understand me. They won't give me any weird looks, which is what happened in Sydney.

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