Best Of Romanian Gymnastics in 2011

by Cris (GymFever)

Mihai from Fangymnastics had the brilliant idea to gather five great minds that think about Romanian gymnastics all the time (roughly about 75% of the time they are awake probably) and ask them who were the best Romanian gymnasts of 2011. The result, The Romanian Gymnastics Gala, although virtual at this point in time, is our tribute to all the gymnasts that work hard all year long and who are rarely celebrated thoroughly, especially in years like this. You know what I mean.

So, the judges:
Mihai (Fangymnastics)
Cris (Gymfever)
Alina (Tare!)
Carmen (Romanian Gymnastics Fans)
and moi.

We tried to combine personal taste with objectivism and the result was quite great if I come to think about it...

So, long story short, here are our results:

For Women's Artistic Gymnastics

Best All Around Gymnast: 1-Larisa Iordache (2-Ana Porgras, 3-Amelia Racea)
Best Gymnast on Vault: 1-Sandra Izbasa (2-Larisa Iordache, 3-Catalina Ponor)
Best Gymnast on Uneven Bars:1-Larisa Iordache (2-Ana Porgras, 3-Amelia Racea)
Best Gymnast on Beam: 1- Larisa Iordache (2-Ana Porgras, 3-Catalina Ponor)
Best Gymnast on Floor: 1-Sandra Izbasa, (2 - Diana Bulimar, 3-Diana Chelaru)
Most consistent gymnast of 2011: 1-Larisa Iordache (2 -Diana Chelaru, 3 -Amelia Racea)
Most surprising gymnast in 2011: 1 - Catalina Ponor (2-Diana Bulimar, 3-Laura Jurca)
Best Routine of the Year: 1-Sandra Izbasa - Europeans, VT EF (2 -Larisa Iordache -EYOF, Beam TF,
3-Catalina Ponor - Worlds, FX Team Finals)
Best Coach of the Year: 1-Adela Popa (2-Octavian Bellu, 3-Cristian Moldovan)
Best Young Gymnast of the Year: 1-Laura Jurca (2-Madalina Blendea, 3-Adela Florea)
Best International Gymnast of the Year: 1-Viktoria Komova, (2-Yao Jinnan, 3-McKayla Maroney)
Fair-play gymnast: 1-Diana Chelaru (2-Diana Bulimar, 3-Ana Porgras)
My favorite gymnast (all time): Daniela Silivas

Men's Artistic Gymnastics

Best All Around: 1-Flavius Koczi (2-Marian Dragulescu)

next, I will add only the winner for Men's:

Best Gymnast - Floor: Flavius Koczi

Best Gymnast - Pommel Horse:  Flavius Koczi

Best Gymnast - Rings: Cristian Bataga

Best Gymnast - Vault: Marian Dragulescu

Best Gymnast - Parallel Bars: Marius Berbecar

Best Gymnast - High Bar: Vlad Cotuna

Surprise of the year: Marius Berbecar

Routine of the year: Flavius Koczi - Europeans, Floor Event Finals

Best Coach of the Year: Marius Urzica

Best Junior Gymnast in the National Team: Daniel Radeanu

Best "Hope" (gymnasts that are not in the "junior" category yet): The entire Lugoj Club Team

Fair-play award: Marian Dragulescu

Best International Gymnast of the Year: Kohei Uchimura

My favorite gymnast (all time): Marius Urzica

Other Categories and other "Gymnastics"

Best Aerobic Gymnast of the Year: 1- Corina Constantin, (2-Valentin Mavrodineanu, 3-Maria Luisa Pavel)

Best Rhythmic Gymnast of the Year: Alexandra Piscupescu

Best Commentary Team: Alina Alexoi and Ramona Micu

Best TV Show about Romanian Gymnastics: The Medal Factory

Best Gymnastics Event (held in Romania): Aerobics European Championships

Best Live Coverage: Brigid, Blythe & Anne (Worlds)

Best Articles of the Year:

Interview with the little gymnasts from Deva

The sad story of the joyful gymnast

The story of the team that won Romania's first Olympic medal

The Story of Larisa Iordache

GymNoCeiling award: Ana Porgras - for the way she handled the pressure during the team and all around finals at Worlds. (HERE)


May this become a great tradition, and sooner rather than later to start giving the awards in person!

Romania in the News: December 5th to 11th

The most important event of the week for Romanians was the Italian Grand Prix held in Catania where Larisa Iordache and Catalina Ponor competed. There were various articles with results but nothing fancy: GSP, Prosport, Romgym .
What concerns me is that they are mentioning Larisa Iordache had a small injury that kept her from competing for several months. Prosport goes as far as five months of break after a foot "intervention" for Larisa and small leg injury for Catalina. How come we didn't we know that?

GSP: Nadia was awarded the key of the city of Acapulco at Mexican Open Gymnastics Championship. (article HERE)

Libertatea: Saint Nicholas filled the shoes of the gymnasts that train at Izvorani with gifts, "especially sweets", as Mariana Bitang mentioned. (HERE)

Larisa Iordache returns to competition

As she placed second on UB (after Komova) in a Grand Prix meet in Catania, Italy.
Aside from a few legs separations, She looked strong, better even than last summer:


Also, Catalina Ponor placed second on BB. The combo of pirouettes is a nice addition to her routine:



More routines from the competition on javiercollados's youtube channel.

Romania in the News: November 28th to December 4th of December

Prosport: Anca Grigoras about the reasons why Romanian gymnasts did not compete at Ostrava (HERE) ("they are in a different stage in their preparation", "It was something they applied for months ago", " "It's better so sign up for it in advance and then withdraw then not to do it and regret", you know, the good stuff)

Adevarul: Interview with Catalina Ponor (HERE) "Worlds were disappointing... no.. extremely disappointing" yes, she's said that many times but I guess people just don't have other questions for her, although this interviewer does try to find out a little bit more about Catalina, we must at least give her that.

... and the video version (HERE)

Messagerul Hunedorean: about Alpen Adrian Cup and Top Gym (HERE)

The Couch Gymnast: interview with Nicolae Forminte and Liliana Cosma (HERE)

Cris asks a good question: "Why is everybody leaving?" of the junior team that represented Romania at 2010 Europeans only Diana Bulimar and Larisa Iordache are still training. My question is, is Stoica asking himself these questions?

TVR: a renown Turkish physician has examined the gymnasts at Izvorani (HERE) - includes some training footage.

Libertatea: interview with Marian Dragulescu (HERE) - although libertatea is not AS ridiculous as other times, the interview is still extremely silly: "are you rich?", "what do you think about Marius Berbecar's 0 at worlds?"* and in the chapter "superstitions" we have warming up before competing.

*I am not sure if you are aware but, Marius Berbecar, who is a Romanian gymnast, and a pretty good one too, got a 0 for a vault at worlds. He could not perform the vault so he chose to land safely on his back - the result - a well deserved but far from unheard of - 0 mark. But the Romanian press is so moronic that the episode was presented as THE news from Worlds (maybe "Returning home without medals" was a bit bigger, not sure). I remember even reading something like "From Nadia's 10 to Berbecar's 0, 30 years of Romanian gymnastics". Yes. This is the press we have in Romania.

Romanians at Top Gym

Paula Tudorache - BB:


Paula Tudorache UB:



Paula Tudorache  FX:



Paula Tudorache VT:



Stefania Stanila UB:



Stefania Stanila FX:



Stefania Stanila BB:



Stefania Stanila 1st VT:



Stefania Stanila 2nd VT:



Thank you, Dutchfan33 for uploading these!

Missing Sandra Izbasa

because she is not boring without ever being over the top:
 "I want to thank the people that are following us in competitions. Gymnastics is a sport for intelligent people. You have to understand how the code of points works and why the judges give 14's, 15s or 13s. Because when they don't get it, people don't watch". She is glad when she sees fans shaking banners . She salutes them in the gym because she doesn't have a Facebook account or a personal site. (full article HERE)

I cannot stop wondering where the team would have been in Tokyo with a healthy Sandra Izbasa throwing vaults like these:

Romania in the News: November 21st to 27th

The Couch Gymnast: Italian Juniors dominated the meet against Romania, Germany and Finland held  in the weekend 19th-20th of November (HERE)

Prosport: Nadia and Bart visited Disneyland for Thanksgiving (HERE)

Adevarul: Catalina Ponor opens up about  2011Worlds and being a gymnast in Romania (HERE) ! Bonus: A very good translation by Fangymnastics (HERE)

Gazeta Sporturilor: Bela Karoly's reaction to an article published in the Romanian press saying that it was in fact another coach, Marcel Duncan, that discovered Nadia (HERE)

Fangymnastics: Paula Tudorache and Stefania Stanila place 14th and 18th respectively at Top Gym (HERE)

Jurnalul National: Complete list of sportsmen and women that medaled at Olympics, Worlds and Euros and benefit of the financial reward that was re-re-debated two weeks ago- includes the monthly pay in Romanian Lei (HERE)

Fangymnastics: A translation of an older interview with Catalina Ponor (HERE)

Evenimentul zilei: The gymnasts want to be the "golden girls" again - article featuring Catalina Ponor and Sandra Izbasa (HERE)

A poll for Romanian Gymnastics

Fangymnastics is starting a project to support Romanian Gymnastics. The preliminary phase consists of gathering some essential info from other gymnastics enthusiasts. If you want to help this initiative, please follow one of the links:

English version here!

Romanian version here!

Team Romania - (Worlds) Qualification Videos - Vault and Bars

Vault

Ana Porgras (13.90/5.0)


Diana Chelaru (14.633/5.8)


Amelia Racea (14.4/5.8)


Raluca Haidu (14.366/5.8)


Catalina Ponor (14.766/5.8)


Uneven Bars
Diana Bulimar (12.433/5.4)


Raluca Haidu (13.833/6.0)


Amelia Racea (13.666)


Ana Porgras (12.666/6.0)


Diana Chelaru (13.533/5.5)


Over-scored... nothing really
Underscored: plenty... absolutely all the vaults. One question: what was wrong with Ana Porgras's vault?
The highlights: Diana Blimar's UB dismount, Pitic nailing all combinations,
My gymnast of the second half: Raluca Haidu.

What did you think of the scores?

Team Romania - (Worlds) Qualifications videos - Beam and Floor

The qualifications videos have finally arrived (thanks to piibuna on youtube). I was extremely curious how harsh were Romania really judged. After seeing the videos, I can say that they were sometimes underscored, rarely over scored and most of the times very fairly scored.

Balance Beam
Amelia Racea (14.733/ 6.1 D)


Diana Bulimar (14.066/6.3)


Catalina Ponor (15.00/6.3)


Ana Porgras (14.4/6.5)


Raluca Haidu (14.533/6.2)


Floor Exercise

Raluca Haidu (13.733/5.5)


Diana Chelaru (14.233/ 5.8)


Ana Porgras (13.866/5.6)


Diana Bulimar (14.4/5.8)


Catalina Ponor (14.2/5.8)


- The most over-scored in this batch was Raluca Haidu's BB;
- The most under-scored was Diana Bulimar's floor;
- The highlights were Raluca's and Amelia's opening passes on BB as well as Diana Bulimar's BB routine (except for the fall);
- My favorite gymnast so far - Diana Bulimar.