Andreea Răducan facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Andreea Răducan
Răducan in 2006
Personal information
Full name	Andreea Mădălina Răducan
Country represented	Romania
Born	(1983-09-30) 30 September 1983 (age 40) Bârlad, Romania
Hometown	Bucharest, Romania
Height	149 cm (4 ft 11 in)
Discipline	Women's artistic gymnastics
Level	Senior International
Years on national team	1998–2002 (ROM)
Club	Club Sportiv Cetate Deva, Farul Constanța
Gym	Deva National Training Center
Head coach(es)	Octavian Bellu
Assistant coach(es)	Mariana Bitang, Lucian Sandu
Music	1998–2001: Las Carretas del Rocio 2000: Reel Around the Sun 2001: Éclipse 2002: Meet Her at the Love Parade and Right in the Night
Retired	January 6, 2003
Medal record Olympic Games Gold 2000 Sydney Team Silver 2000 Sydney Vault Disqualified 2000 Sydney All-Around World Championships Gold 1999 Tianjin Team Gold 1999 Tianjin Floor Gold 2001 Ghent Team Gold 2001 Ghent Balance Beam Gold 2001 Ghent Floor Silver 1999 Tianjin Balance Beam Bronze 2001 Ghent All-Around Bronze 2001 Ghent Vault World Cup Final Gold 2000 Glasgow Balance Beam Gold 2000 Glasgow Floor European Championships Silver Paris 2000 Floor Bronze Paris 2000 Team

Andreea Mădălina Răducan (Romanian pronunciation: [anˈdree̯a rəduˈkan]; born 30 September 1983) is a retired gymnast from Bârlad, Romania. She currently works as a sports announcer and journalist.

Răducan began competing in gymnastics at a young age and was training at the Romanian junior national facility by the age of 12. As one of the outstanding gymnasts of the Romanian team in the late 1990s, Răducan was known both for her difficult repertoire of skills and her dance and presentation. Over her four-year senior career, she won Olympic or World Championships medals on every event except the uneven bars and earned three individual World Championships titles, on the floor exercise in 1999 and 2001 and the balance beam in 2001.

Răducan competed at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where she contributed strongly to the Romanian team's gold medal and won an individual silver medal on the vault. She was also the original winner of the all-around title, but was disqualified and stripped of her gold medal shortly after the competition concluded, when it was revealed that she had failed doping controls, testing positive for pseudoephedrine, a banned substance. She and her coaches maintained that she had been given the substance in two cold medicine pills by a Romanian team physician, and that they had not affected her performance in any way.

The case generated a significant amount of media attention, and Răducan was supported by members of the gymnastics community and the Romanian public. Her case was brought to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in autumn 2000. Răducan herself was exonerated of any personal wrongdoing by the CAS, the Romanian Olympic Committee and the International Gymnastics Federation, and was not subject to any disciplinary measures. However, her medal was not reinstated, and the team doctor who administered the medicine was banned for two Olympic cycles.

Răducan returned the year after the Olympics to win five additional World Championships medals, but retired from gymnastics in 2002. As an adult, she has worked as a sports announcer and media personality, and has pursued university level studies in journalism.

Early career

Răducan was one of the "new-generation gymnasts" groomed to take over the torch of Romanian gymnastics excellence after the retirements of the Olympic medalists Lavinia Miloșovici and Gina Gogean. She began gymnastics at the age of four and a half in her hometown of Bârlad. In 1996, after winning over twenty medals in local and regional competitions, she was invited to train at the Romanian junior team facility in Onești. Two years later, she was promoted to the national training center in Deva.

Răducan's first major international event was the 1998 Junior European Championships, where she won a silver medal on the balance beam, tied for bronze on the floor exercise and took fourth place in the all-around. The next year, she rose to the senior ranks and made an impact at the World Championships in Tianjin, China, winning the floor exercise final and placing fifth in the all-around.

While Răducan's work on the uneven bars was considered weak, her skills on beam, vault and floor exercise were applauded. She was also admired because, unlike other members of the Romanian team, she showed a great deal of expression in her choreography and a wide variety of complex skills in her routines.

Sydney Olympics

Răducan competed well at the Sydney Olympics, helping the Romanian women to win their first Olympic team gold medal since 1984. She qualified for the floor and vault event finals, and, along with her teammates Simona Amânar and Maria Olaru, the all-around finals. In the preliminary round of competition, she had the second highest all-around score of all competitors in the competition, trailing Russia's Svetlana Khorkina by 0.288.

The all-around was mired in controversy. The vault was set 5 centimeters too low, creating a dangerous situation that completely altered the gymnasts' pre- and post-flights. As a result of the incorrectly set vault, many gymnasts suffered serious crashes and injuries during both the warm-ups and the competition, including Khorkina. The British gymnast Annika Reeder was hurt badly enough to withdraw from the remainder of the competition. Even those who escaped injury found themselves shaken by their experiences on the vault. When the error was discovered in the third rotation, International Federation of Gymnastics officials reset the vault height and allowed the competition to continue. They did permit the gymnasts who had vaulted in the first two rotations to take another turn on vault and to be rescored; not every athlete accepted this offer.

Răducan was one of the gymnasts who had vaulted on the incorrectly set apparatus but did not suffer a fall on the event and performed without serious error. She continued through the competition, turning in strong performances on beam and floor, and ended up with the all-around gold medal. On the podium with her were her Romanian teammates; Amânar with silver and Olaru with bronze. Răducan was the first Romanian gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title since Nadia Comăneci in 1976; it was also the first time since 1960 that gymnasts from a single country swept the WAG all-around podium at the Olympics. It was also the last time it was possible for three gymnasts from the same country to sweep the all-around, as the "two per country rule" was introduced in the next Olympic cycle. Andreea went on to win the silver medal in the Vault final, behind Elena Zamolodchikova of Russia and ahead of Ekaterina Lobazniouk of Russia. Speculations around the all around gold arose and Andreea was informed that there was a possibility that she could be stripped of her all around gold medal. This affected her mentally and she went to the floor final fazed by the situation. She fell on her third tumbling pass, and received a score of 9.275. Without that error, she would have scored a 9.775, which was enough for the bronze medal.

After Sydney

Răducan continued to train in Deva after the Olympics. With the retirement of her Sydney teammates Amânar, Olaru and Presăcan, she found herself one of the senior gymnasts at Deva. At the 2001 World Championships in Ghent, Belgium, she was part of the gold medal-winning Romanian team and picked up four individual medals: gold on floor and beam and bronze in the all-around and vault. Injuries and other concerns marred her training in 2002, and after a poor showing at the Worlds in Hungary, she quietly retired.

After retiring, Răducan became a sports announcer in Romania. Her assignments for EuroSport have included the 2004 Olympics in Athens. She also has her own television show and does modelling and promotional work. Răducan also has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Bucharest.

In 2010, Răducan released her autobiography, The Other Side of the Medal, which provides further insight into the disqualification of her all-around result at the 2000 Olympic Games. The 2020 "Golden Girl" film, directed by Adrian Robe and Denisa Morariu-Tamas, covers her attempt to reclaim her title.

President of Romanian Federation

On August 4, 2017, Andreea Răducan was elected president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation (RGF). She takes over from Adrian Stoica, who was the President of the Federation for 12 years. It is expected to a huge challenge for Răducan to improve the performances of the Romanian team, who did not qualify a full team to compete at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The failure to qualify marked the first time Romania did not field a gymnastics team at the Games since 1968.

Drawing on the success of Romania successfully hosting the European Gymnastics Championships April 18–23, 2017, Romania was expected to contend for the all-around and individual titles at the 2017 World Gymnastics Championships in Montreal, Canada. Unfortunately, their arguably best all-around gymnast Larisa Iordache suffered a torn Achilles tendon during warm-up for qualifying. Romania's other hope for a medal, Cătălina Ponor, multiple medal winner in her gymnastics career, failed to qualify in either of the events she competed – beam or floor.

She stepped down from her position upon the failure of either the women's or men's teams qualifying for the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Competitive skills

• Vault: Round-off 1/2 twist on, front layout off.
• Balance beam: full twisting back salto, double pike back dismount, tucked Korbut
• Floor exercise: Double laid-out salto, Whip salto (immediate connection) Back-double pike salto, 2.5 twisting back layout (immediate connection) punch-layout-front, Triple-twisting back layout.

Floor music

• 1998–2000: "Las Carretas del Rocio" by the Orquestra Española de Juan Alfonso
• 2000: "Reel Around The Sun" from the album Riverdance by Bill Whelan
• 2001: "Éclipse" from the album Nouvelle Expérience by René Dupere
• 2002: "Meet Her At The Love Parade" by Da Hool and "Right in the Night" by Jam & Spoon featuring Plavka

Competitive history

Year	Event	Team	AA	VT	UB	BB	FX
1998
	Junior European Championships		4			2	3
	Chunichi Cup		7
	Junior International Team Championships	3	2
1999	Arthur Gander Memorial		3
	Massilia Gym Cup		2
	International Mixed Pairs	1	4
	Swiss Cup			2	3	3	2
	World Championships	1	5				1
2000
	European Championships	3					2
	Olympic Games	1	DQ	2			7
	Chunichi Cup		2
	Cottbus World Cup			7		2
	National Championships		1
2001	Chunichi Cup		4
	Romanian International		1
	National Championships		3
	Massilia Gym Cup		1
	World Championships	1	3	3		1	1

See also

In Spanish: Andreea Răducan para niños

• List of Olympic female artistic gymnasts for Romania
• List of top female medalists at major artistic gymnastics events