Recent content by phoenix7

Ah yes, here's the survey Health and Fitness was under consideration https://gymnaverse.com/threads/fill-out-the-figs-survey-open-through-2024-01-17.2899/ Personally, I think they should have gone with, World Peace and Universal Prosperity, but they have gone with the safe option.

Didn't they run a survey on this, with only one plausible answer? They had at least one ridiculous alternative - Health and Wellbeing or something.

It's the campaign funded by the Belu and Bitang foundation to train up medallists - it means, Country, Country (We want Champions). Sabrina Voinea, Ana Barbosu, Amalia Ghigoarta, Maria Ceplinschi and others of their generation had this funding but Denisa Golgota was of an earlier generation.

Yes, and I suspect that she (unlike Lavinia Agache) was too high profile to be bumped up another year after winning Junior Europeans in 1980.

It wasn't a major competition, but the organiser of the event where Agache impersonated Szabo said he would only ever have looked at passports if there was a query about the identity of the gymnast, i.e. never, really. They were only used to help with travel arrangements I suppose lots of...

Yes, that's my feeling too. The irony is of course that if they changed her from a 1968 birthdate, they got no benefit from it. She'd have qualified for 1983 anyway. It's Lavinia Agache who went from 13 to 15 in 1981. I wonder if the age on her passport was the reason she travelled on...

Bela's Romanian gymnasts - not just Nadia, but also her less prominent teammates - had to learn his version of events and parrot them to the press, so Id be surprised if he didn't work something similar with Dominique when he had the chance.

Oksana Omelianchik also had a 31st December birthday at one point! (But her only major 1984 competition was the Friendship Games - did they actually follow FIG age requirements I wonder?)

I remember once trying to make sense of Szabo's age and giving up. But in case anyone else can work it out ... Her birthday was in January (1967, 1968 or 1969) In 2018, she herself put her age at 50 https://eng.gymnovosti.com/ecaterina-szabo-we-were-like-little-robots/ That would give a 1968...

I didn't know about that! But Bart Conner's commentary in 1985 suggests that nobody was too bothered about Romanian ages back then ...

I remember @MaryClare explaining that using hairspray was a serious status symbol in 1980s USSR, so I'm guessing something like that was going on with 1988 Romanian hair (not just Silivas's) too! Maybe that is why Silivas as gold medal hope got the very biggest hair.

It's all really interesting stuff - thank you. I do think you'd need to add a couple of points to get the full picture - first, that the USSR engaged in exactly the same practice, starting as far as I can see at exactly the same time - 1981. Obviously didn't continue so long (the gymnastics or...

I listened to an interview once (the skating lesson? Or an American TV production?) where she explained that the gymnasts all gave each other trendy short cuts before the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Executives from the FRG had fits at the results and conducted them to Bucharest's finest hair salon...

North Korea took a particularly flamboyant approach to gymnasts' ages. As well as entering sixteen-year-old Kim Gwan Suk as a sixteen year old over multiple years, they had Hong Su-Jong, possessor of at least three dates of birth and a twin sister, Un-Jong, three years her junior. I like to...

Oh I think you must be right - sorry. I had ten in my head.