Monday, April 18, 2016

An Era Is Over, and Rio Will Be Weird

The Romanian women's gymnastics team will not win gold in Rio.  They won't win silver or bronze either.  In fact, they won't even be there.  They didn't qualify.  Take a second to let that sink in.  Romania, the nation synonymous with Olympic women's gymnastics, didn't qualify for the Olympics!  That's like the USA not qualifying in basketball or Canada not qualifying in hockey!

Romania has earned a team medal in women's gymnastics at every Olympics since 1976, when Nadia Comaneci burst onto the scene in Montreal.  That streak will not reach 40 years.  Instead, they'll be sitting on the sidelines when the gymnastics competition gets underway in Rio, which doesn't seem right for so many reasons.

So how did this happen?  Well, it all started at last year's World Championships in Glasgow.  Romania finished fourth at Worlds in 2014, but fell all the way to 13th in 2015 (with a team that included Larisa Iordache, the silver medalist in the all-around in 2014).  The top eight teams qualified for the Olympics.  With that first opportunity out the window, Romania went to the last-chance qualifier this past weekend in Rio needing to finish in the top four to gain one of the four remaining spots.  They finished seventh.

Even though Romania's women's team has slipped in recent years, this is still a shocking development.  The Romanian women were the ones you could always count on seeing if you're a gymnastics fan (and even if you aren't).  They defied the Soviet boycott in 1984 and won their first gold.  They won the team title, then swept the individual medals in Sydney (Andreea Raducan's gold was later taken away due to a controversial failed drug test).  Four years later in Athens, they captured the team gold medal again.

Since then, the fall has been precipitous.  In Rio, Romania will enter one female gymnast, the same number as those gymnastics hotbeds of Argentina, Guatemala, Iceland, India and Jamaica (to name just a few).  There will be more Romanian men (2) competing in Rio than women.  And it's just as bad that the men's team, which isn't quite as accomplished as the women but still has a pretty nice Olympic legacy, didn't qualify.  It's the first time since 1968 that Romania won't participate in either Olympic gymnastic team event.  (Marian Dragulescu, a four-time Olympic medalist, will at least be a medal threat in the men's all-around.)

One of the reasons for Romania's continued success is the system that they've put in place.  Gymnastics, it could be argued, is Romania's national sport.  Representing the national team in the Olympics should be every little Romanian girl's dream.  Where did the system break down?  Is there simply a lack of talent in this generation of athletes or is it something more?  Are the coaches leaving Romania because they can make more money in Russia or the United States or somewhere else?  If that's the case, the Romanian federation needs to step up immediately.

This has to be a national embarrassment for not just the gymnastics team, but the entire Romanian Olympic Committee.  I'm sure they were expecting a handful of gymnastics medals.  Romania won nine medals in London.  Three of them came in gymnastics.  In Beijing, it was two out of eight.  Going back to Athens, when Romanian gymnastics was still at the top of its game, gymnastics accounted for 10 of the country's 19 total medals, including four of the eight golds.

It probably helps the United States more than anybody else that Romania won't be in Rio.  The Americans have won the last two Olympic gold medals and the last three World Championships, so they were going to be big favorites anyway, but a Romanian team, no matter how down, would've had to be considered a major threat.  Now with Romania not in the field, the United States becomes an even bigger favorite.

I'm sure this is just a temporary setback.  The Romanian women's gymnastics team will be back.  Just like when the American men's basketball team lost three times and settled for bronze in Athens, only to completely retool the system, Romania will probably come back even stronger.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see them on the podium at the 2017 World Championships in Montreal, which is where it all started.

But Romania's women's gymnastics team won't be in Rio.  It'll take all four months until the Games just to get used to the idea.  And it'll still seem weird as the competition goes on without them.

Maybe this is exactly what it'll take for Romanian gymnastics to get back to its former greatness.  Because Rio's going to be painful for a once proud gymnastics nation.  One that has no shot at Olympic glory in 2016.

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