Claudia Presãcan Laid Off Following Scandal

Original article was published on Dec. 17 in Adevarul

Although many people were hoping to forget the scandal started by three former gymnasts posing nude for a Japanese porn magazine, this doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon. The Japanese Gymnastics Federation has said it will ask the FIG’s permission to bad the Romanian team from competing in an international event for juniors, held in Yokohama.
Trying to come up with possible explanations for what prompted Lavinia Milosovici, Claudia Presecan and Corina Ungureanu to make the decision they did, Romanian newspaper Adevarul went to Western University [aka Sports University] in Timisoara, where the three former gymnasts went to college, even though Ungureanu spent only one year there, before transferring to Bucharest. Sorinel Voicu, the dean of the college of Physical Education and Sports said that “since 1990, when this university reopened its doors, we’ve had many well-known athletes among our students and we were especially proud of our former gymnasts. We already had the gymnasts who posed nude as our students and now we only have Maria Olaru who is in her third year of college and Andreea Raducan who is a first-year student."

"Lavinia wasn’t a very intelligent girl"

Although he initially avoided making any comments about his former students, dean Sorinel Voicu agreed to give his opinion on what happened. “As far as I’m concerned, they made a mistake. They could have done this as private persons, not portraying themselves as former Romanian athletes and showing off their medals and a Romanian flag in magazines and newspapers that are meant for anything but that. But the Japanese people were smarter and we have to admit they knew what to do in order to promote their magazine. Our gymnasts, gullible enough, told themselves that that’s how you make money, without thinking about their image. What, if I were an Olympic or World champion, would I take my clothes off just to show how beautiful I am? And, let’s be honest, they’re not all that. They should have thought about this beforehand I’ll do this, but I’ll move to a different country and I can do whatever I want over there. But this way, they made fools out of the [national] federation, Romanian gymnastics and the country. Now, unfortunately, I see there’s a huge scandal brewing and if they had still been our students, we would have had to take action and not necessarily kick them out, but we would have asked them to transfer elsewhere.”

In the three years he’s spent as dean of the college, Sorinel Voicu had enough time to form an opinion about Milosovici and Presecan. "Lavinia Milosovici wasn’t a very intelligent girl, talking about school, of course, like Maria Olaru and Simona Amanar are. I can’t explain their decision right now. I wonder if Corina Ungureanu didn’t stick her hand in this. To be honest, I really didn’t expect this from Presecan, but from Lavinia... As far as Presacan is concerned, after she finished school, she found a job at a school in Timisoara. After the first pictures were published, a group of parents went to the school principal and told him they don’t want Presacan coaching their children. So they terminated her contract. Unfortunately, their decision could have serious repercussions of the future of the sport. I believe a lot of parents will stop sending their children to gymnastics classes and that’s bad, because we’re already going through a difficult period in Romanian sports and there aren’t too many children coming in. You can imagine the parents will say Good lord, look what the girls are doing. After they’re out, they go and take their clothes off. We already have a smaller number of children to choose from to begin with.”

"Students showed more tolerance towards their action "

Former dean and gymnastics judge Maria Raicu, the same person who taught Lavinia Milosovici and Claudia Presecan said that “I always helped the girls a lot and gave them good advice. I’m sorry they didn’t ask for my opinion I’m also very offended by the fact they’ve been saying they didn’t get any money from the Romanian government, but let’s not forget that since they were 4-5 and started gymnastics, I doubt they’ve had to pay anything out of their pocket. Now after they retired, they get those life annuities, which is more money that most people dream of."

Another professor, Felix Sinitean, specializing in research methodology, was one of the few professors, if not the only one who brought the case to the students’ attention. “They had that debate on television on Mr. Tuca’s show and the next day we talked about this in class and tried to find out what the students think about their former colleagues. To be honest, I didn’t get the impression they were too affected by their action. I think they are more tolerant and they looked at this in a very different light. On the other hand, another professor brought professional ethics into discussion, taking into account the fact that both Milosovici and Presecan are teachers. As far as I’m concerned […], I tend to believe that before we could do something like this, we need to think about society’s reaction. We’re public personas and we are no longer our own person.”

Back to Articles Page