The Medal Factory (translation):

Ana Porgras: It was difficult for me to get myself together.

Diana Chelaru: I can´t say I´m happy with myself, I could have done better.

Lucian Sandu: We still have problems.

Adrian Stoica: Romania is not a bars specialist, neither in the women nor in the men´s competition.

The team trained by Marian Bitang and Octavian Bellu had good performances at the World Championships but the uneven bars did not allow us to make the podium. Romania finished this year´s competition in 4^th place, but there are high expectations for London.

Lucian Sandu: We still have problems. We have issues on vault, on uneven bars, even on floor and there is little time till the Olympics. We all hope to fight for the podium there.

Diana Chelaru: It happens…competition is competition, you can also make mistakes. We believe we did the best we could, but this is the result….

Reporter: Was it better than in qualification?

Diana Chelaru: Yes, it was better.

Reporter: You did not miss this time.

Diana Chelaru: Well, somewhat….The important thing is that we didn´t fall and we kept going despite of having difficulties. This is what matters most.

Raluca Haidu: Bars didn´t go well for me, I could have done much better. It´s too late to fix it now.

Reporter: But it was better than in qualifying, overall.

Raluca Haidu: Yes. It was better now but the mistake on bars counted.

Ana Porgras: This is it, we made a mistake.

Reporter: Where could you have done better?

Ana Porgras: Definitely on bars. We could have added that half point we lost. I can´t say we did great on the other apparatus either, but on bars mistakes very obviously visible.

Reporter: Is this frustration I see on your face?

Ana Porgras: Yes, because when the difference is of 2 points, it´s ok. But with half a point difference….

Adrian Stoica: We see the girls´ performance from two different angles. For day one, they had bad luck with the draw to compete before everyone else and they had a bad day. They were nervous. Catalina pushed them along as much as she could, she was the leader this time. We missed going into finals despite of the value of our routines and I´m especially referring to Ana´s beam.

Ana Porgras: I cannot turn back time but I proved to myself that the problems in qualifying were just a coincidence.

Reporter: This was your last final. Are you happy with your overall performance?

Ana Porgras: No, because I did not win any medal. Taking into consideration that I won gold in Rotterdam and I didn´t even make the finals here, it´s obvious something is definitely wrong.

Adrian Stoica: The girls had good performances in the team final, maybe not their best ones but ok on 3 apparatus. Bars, unfortunately, is still an unsolved issue. If we take a look at the last competitions, we have basically competed with a handicap there. If you start a competition with a 2-4 point difference, you cannot make up for it. We knew this would happen, this is not a surprise. The surprise is that we have been trying to improve performance on this apparatus and we are still not there yet.

Nadia: We could have fought for third, but the Chinese are 3-4 points ahead of us on bars, they clearly taught us a lesson there. In the gymnastics world, everyone knows this is our weak event despite of the fact that we have a couple of girls who perform pretty well. I think for now we will be fighting the Chinese for bronze, but we have 2 girls at home. Sandra would have done wonders for us on floor and vault, the girls really needed her help. I keep messaging Catalina and I understand not even her coaches can stop her, she wants to do more. Her experience is a big asset. Coming back after 5 years, when almost two generations have changed, is very hard.

Catalina´s comeback did not go unnoticed. Nadia declared herself a fan of the Athens champion and appreciates her will to fight for the podium again. The French journalists highlighted Catalina´s return gives an impulse to Romania, both inside and outside the gym. Deciding retirement was not her thing, the 24 year old Romanian gave back the team that diva aura that helped build momentum in the team final. “Romania needed a star and that is exactly what Ponor is.” noted the same journalists.

Nadia: People know her, she is appreciated also in Japan where there are a lot of Romanian fans.

Although the Romanian team has some of the best coaches in the world, problems have not completely gone away. Gymnasts have a lot of technical issues when they reach the National teams and cannot solve them in such a short time.

Adrian Stoica: The problems come from the clubs, where we lack the necessary personnel. There is both a quality and a quantity problem as, for example, we don´t have male coaches rin women´s gymnastics at any club. So this problem grows bigger and you have a weak event in your hands. One quarter of the competition is compromised because of this. At a National team level, there is a lot of effort going into solving this. They need to maximize what the girls can do and use the code of points to the best of their ability. But it´s not enough. Gymnastics in the past few years has changed a lot. If you don´t have the difficulty, you can´t stand a chance of making the podium.

Nadia: We don´t have coaches at basic levels in the country anymore. We cannot compare our situation with the 2500 gymnastics clubs in the US today.

Adrian Stoica: With Sandra we would have won the bronze medal and it would have been nice. The girls deserved this. But this does not solve our issues, this would only have covered them for a while. We don´t want to cover this, we want to solve it. This is our objective.

Nadia: The girls competed well, but they need better vaults. We need 2 Amanars, like the Americans who scored 2 points more just with their difficulty. I know we can have them, Sandra has 2 good vaults. Larisa had to stay home and I don´t understand why FIG changed this rule, at least before the Olympics the girls should compete even without being 16, they are only 7 months away from the Olympics….

With a couple of months going into the London Olympics, Adrian Stoica does not promise any miracle: “I would not want to promise anything. We are missing some gymnasts, it´s true, but the US had the most consistent team, surpassing by far China and Russia. Maybe we can find some reason for this: we have around 12 productive clubs in Romania while the US has around 2500. This is a big difference. Russia is missing Mustafina, she will probably be in London and she is extremely dangerous. I don´t know if all our efforts will solve our issue on bars for good before then. We will need to focus on the individuals and try to do as well as possible in the team final without missing out on the individual possibilities.”

RGF