Is Oană coming back?

Yesterday before leaving for Denmark, RGF president Nicolae Vieru said Ioachim Oană might return to Deva as team doctor. “Three other doctors sent in their resumes for the job opening, but they’re all very young and they don’t have much experience. So we are considering bringing Oană back to the national team in Deva. He could take care of the girls, without accompanying them to international events,” said Vieru.

Ioachim Oană , who currently has his own private practice in Deva said he did not receive any proposals from the national federation as of yet. “I’ll wait for the ones who blamed me to take back what they said. Only then I’ll consider going back,” said Oană. Coaches Mariana Bitang and Octavian Belu are on the other side of the trenches. “Calling Oană back to the national team is the most preposterous thing I’ve heard. If people from outside [the country] would hear about this, they’ll think we’re all sadomasochists,” said Mariana Bitang. “I don’t think this would be legally possible. On the other hand, it’s inconceivable to sneak a man of his experience in and out of the gym,” added Octavian Belu. He confessed that he has nothing against Oană on a personal level, but his reputation is already tarnished. “It would be a bad move for Romanian sports medicine as well”.

Ioachim Oană was one of the main characters in the doping scandal in the Sydney Olympics, when Andreea Răducan had her AA gold medal removed after testing positive for pseudoephedrine. It turned out everything was a mistake on Oană’s part who gave the gymnast two ephedrine-based Nurofen cold pills after she complained of cold symptoms. Oană received an 8-year suspension from the IOC, while the RGF fired him as national team doctor, a position he held since 1983. The National Medical Association initially suspended his license for 6 montha, but later went back on their decision on the basis that Oană did nothing wrong form a strictly medical perspective.

Since then, the Olympic training center has been left without medical supervision. “The only one who helps us is a nurse. I don’t know how long she’ll last because she has to take care of 18 girls all by herself. We had another doctor around January, but she was too old and already retired, and in June we had another doctor, but she was too young and without experience. None of them stayed more than a few weeks,” explains Mariana Bitang. Despite that, Bitang said Octavian Belu and herself would never accept Oană back to the national team.

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