The secrets of a gymnast

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The Secrets of a gymnast
Andrei Nourescu
© 2006 Andrei Nourescu

Foreword:

• The relation athlete - coach is essential in high level sports. In 1993, a twelve year old gymnast left her brains on the balance beam because her coach felt that was the best punishment of her hesitations. The girl has never hesitated again.
• Her death moved the Romanian world of sports. Leaders pretended to see this for the first time, instead of abuse being a habitual practice. Children are being beaten in Romanian sports, especially in gymnastics.
• Children leave their homes when they are seven years old, children from poor families get into a system of less food and more beatings. Coaches justify the beatings as 'or they won't get anywhere'
• Nobody really wants to know how Nadia Comaneci, Gina Gogean or Lavinia Milosovici became champions and what real price they paid for it.

The shocking story of a Romanian gymnast (Andrei Nourescu)

• Has covered gymnastics for more than a decade. Attended all major competitions all over the world. After witnessing the triumphs and sometimes disasters of Romanian gymnastics he thought he had seen it all and that Romanian gymnastics did not hold any secrets from him. After having the privilege to write an exclusive story on a top gymnast he realized he was wrong: he never understood anything at all.
• Finally for the first time, a top Romanian gymnast shares her story. One of the Golden Girls courageously decided that it is time to break the silence. Her story, with all its tragedies, is sometimes soft and nice, sometimes hard and painful. For sure it is worth reading.

Disclaimer
This book is based on an actual story. However, the events and characters in this book are fictions. Any connection or similar fact related to a real person is pure casual

 

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The writer is using (slightly) different names for the characters, I assume we all know who he means so I will keep to the names used in the book...

 

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The ordeal beginning

• More than 50000 spectators are looking at her in the huge Atlanta's Georgia Dome. She is only 14 and knows that her future career, if not her entire life depends on the routine she is going to perform. The Olympics are broadcasted around the world. Of the billion spectators Alexandra knows one of them is praying for her: her grandmother in Bucharest.
• Alexandra focusses, her coach Octavian Penu looks at her with cold eyes and shouts "Go! And do it well". For a moment the remembers she is still angry with him after Penu pulled her out of the All-round competition four days ago to give a chance to a better gymnast. She had been crying for hours, but now is the moment for revenge.
• The judges turn on the green light and Alexandra gets on the balance beam. After a few seconds she misses a link and she falls down. 50000 spectators remain mute and while she gets back onto the balance beam, again some tears appear into Alexandra's eyes. She lost everything but she wants to finish her routine. The pain is almost making her lose her sense, but she continues. Another skill and she falls again. Penu is turning around and is not looking anymore, like he is afraid of the tragedy. Alexandra cries and again climbs back onto the balance beam. Before the end of the routine, she falls again.
• After the routine Penu comes near her and angrily whispers in her ear: "Get the hell out of here! Out of this hall" Alexandra is desperate, she picks up her clothes and leaves the hall, she feels like the earth is falling down on her head.

The childhood

• Alexandra Mateescu's journey with sports started when she was just four years old. When she was four her parents thought it would be good for her to join the swimming pool near her house. They felt swimming was good for her to develop a well-rounded body, even if she never became a champion. When they saw the pool for the first time her parents were not impressed. The water was dirty and cold and there were many children swimming in it. There was no changing room and no hot showers. Her mother's instinct was to take her back home but her father was convinced Alexandra should give it a try. They handed her over to the coach, they could not stay with her as they had to go to work. They had difficulty making ends meet. Both parents had decent jobs which only earned them about 100$ per month.

From swimming to gymnastics

• Days went by and Alexandra started to enjoy swimming. She was not very fond of the cold water but she enjoyed spending time and playing with the other children. After the training they would get a wafer (cookie?). But one day one of the coaches would change her life forever. Alexandra was on the edge of the pool skipping the rope as a warm-up. The coach looked at her for a while and then called her parents. "Take her to gymnastics, she has spring and ability for the sport, it would be such a pity if you don't try with gymnastics". Her parents listened to him and the next day they went to the Triumph Club, a modest club but still near her house. The coach Benone Slavuteanu received her and took her though the selection, where 50 other girls were also trying to be selected. About 30 girls, including Alexandra, were selected and training began. Alexandra enjoyed it very much, and was delighted to go back to the gym for training, even though she did not understand much of it. As time went by the requirements became more and more difficult. Alexandra was learning the most important elements but it was getting harder and harder.

The first competition

• When she was six years old, Alexandra Mateescu competed in her first competition. It was called "The little gymnast" and she was very nervous. She went to the competition with her whole family who watched her from the stands. She won the all-around and 3 events, earning a 10.00 on each of them. The competitions multiplied, many of them outside of Bucharest. Alexandra won almost all of them.
• Alexandra started school and her schedule became extremely busy. She went to school in the mornings, went home to change her clothes, went to the gym for training. When she came back home there was hardly any time to do homework before she fell asleep. The children in the neighborhood would often invite her to come and play but Alexandra always refused them. The children did not understand that the now seven year old girl had given up her childhood a long time ago.

 

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She said "No" to Steaua

• The coaches started training Alexandra twice a day. In order to go to school to, Alexandra changed classes so she could to school in the afternoon. After school it was back to the gym for the second training session. Often Alexandra would miss the last hour of school because she was so tired she went home to rest. Her teachers were very understanding.
• At the National competitions Alexandra made a great debut. She won two gold medals at the National Championships in Focsani. Het grandmother went with the to the competition. She rarely saw her family as she now lived at the Triumph club training camp. She only came home on weekends. Her parents did not worry about Alexandra not living at home, she was a grown-up now.
• The 1992 National championships were held in Constanta, again her grandmother travelled with her. As usual she was the best but she was competing such a difficult skills that she surprised even the judges. "I was competing such a difficult moves on the floor that it took the judges half an hour to score my routine. I received a 9.95 but deserved a 10.00" Alexandra remembers.
• In 1993 Alexandra joined the Junior National team. The coordinating coach was Elizabeta Stoiciu who was also working at the Steaua club. She was the wife of the General Secretary of the Romanian gymnastics Federation, Andre Stoiciu.
• Alexandra was staying at the National training center but two days per week she travelled to the Steaua club for training. Seeing her skills and her value, Elizabeta Stoiciu asked Alexandra to move to Steaua club but she refused. "From that time Mrs. Elizabeta looked at me differently, she did not treat me like she used to" said Alexandra.

Leader of the Junior team

• Alexandra Mateescu was progressing more and more. She was by far the best junior gymnasts and the specialist coaches were watching her. Her parents were delighted with the progress and were very proud of their daughter. Alexandra was the light of their lives, all their hopes were placed on her. The economic situation in Romania was extremely difficult and Alexandra's father lost his job and had a lot of trouble finding a new one. Alexandra's father was the first employee to be fired as the bosses assumed that he had a stable financial situation. "Your daughter Alexandra is making good money with gymnastics and you can live from it" His bosses motivated his dismissal. Alexandra's father did not want to stay unemployed, he borrowed some money and started his own business, as Alexandra did not make as much money as his former bosses assumed. He opened a little shop where he sold shoes.

Separation from her parents

• In the meantime Alexandra was working hard and she was amazing her coaches with her ambition. She was always the last to leave the gym. "I was always trying to do as much as I could, as best as I could" remembers Alexandra. "If things did not go well I would burst into tears, Mrs. Eliza always came to encourage me".
• Alexandra's first trip abroad was to Istanbul, Turkey where she competed in the Bosphorus cup competition. She was very excited but came back exhausted after two days driving in an old touring bus.
• As the requirements became harder the Romanian gymnastics federation became stricter and moved the team to the National training center. The trainings became harder and the girls called their parents every day. "We were calling our parents to come and take us home because we could not do it anymore". The gymnasts were desperate and they hardly realized that this was only the beginning. Even the meetings with their parents were reduced. Before, the parent were allowed to visit their children twice per week, then they were only allowed to visit on Sundays. After that only once every two weeks and so on. "I was lucky that I was from Bucharest and my parents were close. They used to visit me in secret, without being seen by the coaches" Alexandra recalls. "They would bring me some biscuits and ask how I was doing. I never told them how hard it was for me because I did not want to worry them"

Many restrictions and less school

• One after the other the gymnasts were deprived of calling their parents too often or having meetings with their parents for more than once per month. They were forbidden to leave the building they were living at other than for school or training. All kinds of sweets were taken off the menu and they were forbidden to eat anything that was not given to them at the table. As the restrictions were multiplied, so were the trainings sessions both in duration and intensity. The first training session was from 08:00 to 12:00. After that they went to school, to return to the gym from 15:00 to 18:00. They were not doing much at school, it was more a matter of attendance. "Being gymnasts we were treated differently, we weren't attending all the classes and didn’t even know all of our teachers. We were given grades without doing anything" describes Alexandra.

The first beating

• In order to control their weight as much as possible, the coached introduced the use of the scale every evening. "If we even weighted 200 grams more than the previous evening we were hit in the head with a notebook that made us leaving the scale feeling dizzy" says Alexandra. Another punishment for putting on weight was the ban on having lunch or dinner. Inventive and hungry the girls found all kind of solutions. They either appealed to the "reserves" hidden under their beds (biscuits, wafers, or chocolate received from their parents) or they appealed to a more risky method: the escape out of the window. "I remember how we were starving and while our coaches were having lunch with the other girls, we were jumping out of the window running to the grocery store to get something to eat" says Alexandra.
• Getting suspicious, the coaches soon resorted to more ingenious methods of control. They followed the gymnasts in secret from their car when they were coming from or going to school. Once they caught them stopping at a food store they would leave them but later in the evening bring them into a room for an inquiry. Elizabeta Stoiciu asked each of them what they bought at the food store. The girls who refused to answer were slapped across the face. "It took my breath away because I had never seen a coach hit a gymnast. I was so scared that they were going to beat me too that when they asked I admitted that I had bought some biscuits. I got off without being beaten, I was just called a cow and stupid" Alexandra recalls. In time, also Alexandra would get used to being slapped too.
• As they were caught in the act, the coaches decided to change the system and didn't let the girls go to school anymore. The federation arranged some teachers to come to the hostel where they were living as to eliminate the girls leaving the complex.