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After a twelve year hiatus from the Olympic Games, Romania is back with a competitive women’s gymnastics team that shocked pundits by qualifying for the team finals on Tuesday. Romania led Great Britain through the first three rotations in the qualifying round, but a couple of unfortunate falls on the Uneven Bars allowed the Brits to squeak by. Still, Romania took the last of the 8 team qualifying positions with a score of 159.497.
The qualifying round also saw two Romanian gymnasts, Ana Barbosu and Amalia Ghigoarta, qualify for the individual all-around competition on Thursday. In addition, Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, daughter of 1980s Olympic Gymnast Camelia Voinea, qualified for the apparatus finals to be held next weekend on both the floor exercise and the vault.
From 1976, when Nadia Comăneci, captured the hearts of the World with her performance at the Montreal Olympics, until the London Games in 2012, Romania was an Olympic gymnastics powerhouse, winning 62 medals overall, including 12 team medals. Athletes such as Nadia Comăneci, Ecaterina Szabo, Daniela Silivaș, Aurelia Dobre, Christina Bontaș, Lavinia Milișovici, Simona Amânar, Andreea Răducan, and others left an indelible mark on the sport.
After failing to qualify for the 2016 and 2021 games, Romania is back with a competitive team that shows great promise for the future. An excellent history of Romanian Gymnastics that focuses on many of the great personalities of the sport is available from Histria Books.
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