Romania’s Senior Team out of Europeans


According to Romania Libera, Romania will not field a team for the Senior European Championships. Octavian Belu and Mariana Bitang only have 8 gymnasts that they train, and Petrovschi (they mis-identified her as Petrescu) is the only one who is age eligible besides Andreea Raducan. The other team members were sent back home to continue their rehab, or training. Based on their regaining their competitive shape, or recovering form injuries, they may or may not be asked back to Deva. As far as Raducan is concerned, she will follow a special training program for the next two weeks, where her main goal will be losing the extra weight. The team coaches will only make a decision after these two weeks whether or not to send her to Euros as an individual.

”We’ve had it!”


Yesterday, assistant coach Mariana Bitang said the main reason for sending the gymnasts home was their lack of discipline. “Look, we got to the point where we have to raise our hand in front of a gymnast and ask for her permission to admonish her for not doing a routine well,” explained Bitang. “As of late, we let the gymnasts do what they want and, voila, now we have no national team.”

Members of the world champion team from Ghent were sent to train at their home clubs. Coach Octavian Belu said he supported splitting the team because he no longer wanted to assume responsibility for gymnasts who don’t want to work. “The team atmosphere has degraded a lot. The athletes who are well endowed financially can’t find their motivation, and the others are very fragile and they give up the second they run into problems,” recalled Belu. He is unhappy that the latest generation of gymnasts cannot stand strict coaching, or being admonished. “I only know how to work using the system that brought us good results thus far. I’m too old to change. It’s better I don’t do it [change] at all,” confessed Belu. “We push them to turn them into champions. They no longer have a winners’ mentality. We've had it. See ya, good-bye! This is professional prostitution!”, said Bitang [meaning a prostitution of the coaching profession].

Belu doesn’t believe Andreea Răducan can fulfill the condition on which she was allowed to continue training at Deva. Besides deciding to pull the (senior) team out of the European Championships set to be held in Patras in April, the Executive Committee also agreed to give Răducan two weeks to lose the extra 3 kilograms (6 lbs) she now weighs compared to last year’s worlds. Even if she will manage a spectacular weight loss, Belu believes Andreea’s chances of getting to Patras are small. “After such an effort and her inconsistent training, it would be fairly hard. Only her ambition could solve this situation,” said the coach. "It’s still risky. It’s one thing to send a completely unknown gymnast, like Oana Petrovschi, to compete in a mixed group with the Albanians, and another one when it comes to Răducan,” explained Belu. “It would be very confusing for her to go from a premiere league team to one in the third division [soccer comparison].”
The only seniors who could have gone to Europeans were Oana Petrovschi, Andreea Ulmeanu and Andreea Răducan. "The first one would have done one event, Ulmeanu floor and vault, and Andreea would have been competitive on beam,” explained Belu. Now, only 16-year old Petrovschi is still training for Europeans. "That’s how things stand. At last year’s Worlds, China only sent one gymnast. She won one medal – a bronze.”

World team champion Sabina Cojocar was given permission to resume normal training, following tests done this morning at the Sports Medicine Institute. “They told her she’s ok. She still refuses to train. This is just an example of the lack of discipline on our team,” said Mariana Bitang. The gymnast underwent arthroscopic surgery on her shoulder at the end of last year. Ever since then, she’s been training with the gymnasts who are only allowed to do low-impact rehab exercises at Deva.

Although Romania has pulled its senior team from the European Championships, the RGF does not risk being asked to pay back the Youth and Sports department for the money they were given to prepare for the event. “At the beginning of the year, we were given a 17 billion lei ($570,000) budget. The act of taking part in the European Championships would have cost us about 500 million lei ($17,000),” said Adrian Stoica, RGF General Secretary. “However, the girls train 365 days out of 365. It’s impossible to calculate exactly how much money you spend preparing for one competition.”


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