Dear people, you’re kind of a jerk

While doing research on former Romanian gymnast Alexandra Marinescu, I stumbled across a very interesting document written by Matt Esler, webmaster of World Gym Rank, which I have linked to here for a while now. The article originally came out in March 2003.

Romanian gymnastics has been building a titanic legacy for years, and under coaches Octavian Belu and Mariana Bitang, they did a swell job of it. But when you want to build a legacy, sometimes you want it so badly that you sacrifice an indivdual’s well-being for the sake of that glory. 

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the document Esler authored: a proposal to investigate the Romanian Gymnastics Federation and its programmes.

Infuriating, to be sure, but not surprising, considering that those things were such Soviet things to do. And the Soviets dominated gymnastics for the better part of a century. Go figure.

A video purportedly dating from 1998, which features Nadia and Milo (yay!):

Milo looks especially great from 3:10 onwards: she’s shown coaching a little girl in her hometown of Lugoj.
Remember, she was banned from coaching until 2007 because of the Japanese porn thing. Wasted years, wasted years. Oh Milo, why did you sell out to Japanese sex maniacs? Yes, I understand the Romanian Gymnastics Federation was outrageously behind on paying you for coaching at Deva, but…

NBC actually did a Sappy Fluff about Romanian Scandals during its 2004 Athens broadcast, ranging from the Răducan doping scandal, to Marinescu’s Deva exposé, to Milo posing naked:

(If you see nothing else, I want you to contemplate the amazing beautifulness that is Miloşovici at 0:22 and 1:12 - the latter has to one of the hottest video shots of Milo ever. Woo.)

(EDIT: I also want to yell at the Japanese gymnastics officials who condemned Milo and her two compatriots in 2002 for doing the porn stuff. I’ll be the first to agree with them that it was sick and wrong and ugly and should never have happened. But the Japanese have little right to condemn that. The Romanians had a right to chastise them; Milo, Ungureanu, and Presecan were their gymnasts. But Japan, spouting off about them? Give me a break! It’s Japan that allows that market to flourish. It’s Japanese culture that allows catering to sex maniacs. As a former Japanese anime freak, I know this.)

Of course the Romanians won team gold in 2004 Athens Olympics, and to add icing to the cake, Monica Roşu won gold on vault and Cătălina Ponor won gold on floor and beam, the latter on which her teammate Alexandra Eremia won bronze. (EDIT: And how could I forget about Daniela Şofronie’s silver on floor?)

And then Belu and Bitang retired. Perhaps we may say it is for the best that they did, for the sake of the girls still in Deva, but now it seems that no one really expects the new Romanian generation, like Steliana Nistor or Sandra Izbasa, to live up to their predecessors.