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Thursday, September 21
Raducan first Romanian to win since Comaneci
Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia -- With the gold medal hers, Andreea
Raducan ran to her coach and climbed onto his shoulders, waving and
blowing kisses to the adoring crowd.
Andreea Raducan, Queen of the Olympics, at age 16.
"It's like having a dream, a nice dream," she said. "I still
feel like I'm in this dream."
The 4-foot-10, 82-pound
Raducan won the women's all-around Thursday night, the first
Romanian to take the gold since Nadia Comaneci.
As if that wasn't triumph enough for the Romanian team, which
also won the team gold, Simona Amanar and Maria Olaru took the
silver and the bronze medals. It's the first time a country has
swept the all-around since the former Soviet Union did it in 1960.
"It was my dream to have my Olympic champion," said coach
Octavian Belu, who took over the Romanian team after Bela Karolyi
defected to the United States in 1981.
"We have a lot of medals in the Olympic Games, the European
championships and the world championships, but I try to prepare the
kind of spirit to want to be the best in the world and have this
title: Queen of the Olympic Games."
The only thing marring Raducan's coronation was a controversy
over the vault's height. The vault was set almost two inches too
low for the first two rotations, and it caused some spectacular
crashes.
It also might have cost favored Svetlana Khorkina the gold.
Khorkina didn't get enough height on her first vault and landed
flat on her knees. Her 9.343 was enough to knock her out of
contention, and when a coach reached out to comfort her as she got
off the podium, she angrily pulled her arm away and stomped off.
Gymnasts in the first two rotations were given the option of
redoing their vaults, but Khorkina didn't bother. She'd fallen off
the uneven bars, and knew a good vault wasn't enough to save her.
She finished 11th overall. She blew past reporters afterward,
telling them in Russian to get lost.
The vault also hurt American Elise Ray, who took a scary fall on
her back in warmups. She then fell on both of her vaults, landing
smack on her backside on the second. She scored a 7.618, one of the
lowest scores of the meet, and dropped to last place.
Ray finished in 35th, but moved all the way up to 14th after
redoing her vaults.
"I wonder if I'd done the two vaults that I did at the end at
the start, I know I would have been more fired up going into the
three events I had left," Ray said. "I'm extremely disappointed,
but it also makes me very mad that the equipment is wrong, you
know?"
Amy Chow and Kristen Maloney can't blame the vault for their
poor finishes. Chow, who finished 15th, wobbled on the balance beam
and then stumbled backward on her dismount. On the floor, she
stepped out of bounds on a tumbling pass.
Maloney finished 20th after stumbling on the balance beam,
taking a huge wobble as soon as she got on.
Four years after winning the team gold in Atlanta, the Americans
have only one more chance to avoid a shutout on the medals podium.
Ray qualifed on the balance beam finals.
"Falling on the first event out, it definitely shoots your
confidence down a lot," Ray said. "I tried to build myself up as
much as I could, but that was probably one of the toughest things
to keep myself going through the rest of this meet."
It certainly wasn't a problem for Raducan. Nothing was.
With her bright eyes and captivating smile that's reminiscent of
Romania's last darling, Raducan won over the crowd with elegant,
airy routines that were a delight to watch.
Performing her floor routine to "Riverdance," Raducan kicked
up her heels, prancing across the floor with a big smile on her
face. She looked almost like Peter Pan as she tumbled, flying
across the floor with ease.
When she finished, she grinned and ran to Belu, who swept her
into his arms in triumph before she climbed onto his shoulders.
"I don't know why I did this," she said, smiling shyly.
"Normally I'm a very serious person during the competition. But
this time, I did something different."
Nine days shy of her 17th birthday, she still has an endearing
childlike innocence. At the medalists press conference, she sat
down at the edge of Olaru's seat, almost falling off, because she
didn't want to take the seat in the middle that she thought was
reserved for Belu.
"She's a very dynamic gymnast," Belu said. "What she feels,
she shows."
As the gold medal was placed around her neck, she looked at it
in wonder and then picked it up, kissing it before holding it up to
the crowd.
"I'm very happy to have this gift for my birthday," she said.
"I hope to have other gifts in the future."
And her future is definitely bright. Despite its dozens of
medals, Romania hasn't had a gymnast this endearing since Comaneci.
But Belu was quick to caution that, despite the resemblance,
Raducan isn't Comaneci.
"Nadia is unique," Belu said. "This gymnast is Andreea
Raducan."
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