From GSP:

There´s snow and sun. And there has been snow and sun since Tuesday at the National Sports Complex in Piatra Arsa, in the Bucegi mountains. “Only the rainbow is missing!” says one of the employees.

– Where do the snow flakes come from when the sky is blue?
– I think the window blowing up there brings them, someone explains….

You can see the clouds in the distance, white and puffy. One of them lost his way over here. The only colors lost in the white of Piatra Arsa are the gymnasts. The Men´s National team, who is training up here, begin their day early in the morning. With -5 degrees Celsius, the 9 gymnasts begin running on the slopes around the Complex dressed in their running gear, but wearing 3 more t-shits underneath.

For one whole hour, they go up and down one after another on the route to Sinaia – 2000m. The first going up is Andrei Munteanu, the youngest member of the group. No one complains. The 2011 European Champion on Floor, Flavius Koczi takes the lead going down. Ioan Suciu, the coordinator of the team, takes the gymnasts to the stadium. Snow and rusty doors. The perfect place for a football match.

Koczi feels as comfortable on the field as on the floor. His coach, Marius Urzica is unsuccessful in his attempt to take the ball away from Flavius, who stubbornly holds onto it. It all ends with a fight in the snow where Razvan Spirescu, the group´s masseur, suffers the most. He will “take care” of them in the massage session.

The road to the hotel seems long and they are tired. After having lunch, they rest for two hours and meet again in the gym. They start to prepare the training and move on to the apparatus, pommel horse and parallel bars. 30 minutes later they move on to the gym where they climb the ropes as well as Spiderman himself and do series of 10 minutes each. After a 2 minute break, they start all over. In the same silent way they did before, but this time sweat shows all over their bodies and the effort all over their faces…

Training ends with sauna and the swimming pool, followed by shower and dinner. At 8pm, Koczi, Bataga, Berbecar, Bucur, Buidoso, the two Muntean, Cotuna and Ursache come together to read a book and watch TV. “We´re in the last phase of the training for the London Games. Training in the mountains is a first stage in the preparation. We´ll have the first competition in March, at the World Cup and the European Championships in April. But our goal is the Olympics.” Ioan Suciu explained. Marius Urzica, the Sydney Olympic Champion on pommel horse, talked about the gymnasts: “They are a very disciplined generation. Very nice guys.”

The gymnasts are set to go back to Bucharest on Saturday, if the weather will allow them to. They will have just ended their first stage in their road to London. The easiest one!

“I don´t like the mountains at all. I don´t like snow, I don´t like getting wet, I don´t like the cold. I´m not even into skying. I like it better at home, in Bucharest.” (Flavius Koczi)

Dragulescu is missing
Marian Dragulescu, the most successful gymnast in the team, did not make the trip to Piatra Ars?. He is still recovering after the ankle surgery he had to go through after the World Championship injury. “He went to Viena to check it and everything is ok. He had to protect the previously injured foot so he put too much pressure on his other foot. He is taking care of that now and we hope he will be able to start training in February.” said Ioan Suciu.

The gymnasts present at Piatra Arsa: Flavius Koczi, Cristian Bataga, Marius Berbecar, Adrian Bucur, Ovidiu Buidoso, Andrei Muntean, Vasile Muntean, Andrei Ursache and Vlad Cotuna.

RGF