Ana Barbosu of Romania during the Women’s Floor Exercise Final on day ten of the Olympic Games Paris 2024. Daniela Porcelli/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images
The Romanian women’s artistic gymnastics team experienced a series of lows during the floor exercise final of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
During the Monday, August 5, competition, Team Romania issued a score inquiry regarding Sabrina Maneca-Voinea’s performance. Each team can ask the judging panel to look into an athlete’s score, essentially rescoring the level of difficulty of a certain move. Maneca-Voinea’s challenge was denied. After the score remained unchanged, Simone Biles, Maneca-Voinea’s teammate Ana Barbosu, and Jordan Chiles performed their own routines. All three women placed higher than Maneca-Voinea.
Rebeca Andrade, Biles, 27, and Barbosu, 18, took home gold, silver and bronze, respectively. As Barbosu celebrated on the mat with her country’s flag, news broke that Team USA filed an inquiry into the difficulty of one of Chiles’ leaps. The judges ultimately accepted the consideration, bumping her up from fifth to third.
Barbosu was heartbroken that she narrowly missed a medal opportunity.
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“Thank you to everyone who encouraged me before, during, and after the competition,” Barbosu wrote via Instagram Story on Monday before reposting a statement from retired gymnast Sandra Izbasa-Bianca. “‘I hear more vividly than ever the words that the coaches repeated to us almost daily in the training room. ‘You, as Romanians, must be more than perfect in order not to leave room for interpretations!’ And here, it proves itself once again! Girls, head up and back straight! Keep believing in your dreams! Go Romania!’”
Team Romania have spent the interim reexamining their athletes’ floor scores. The Romanian Olympic Committee’s president, Mihai Covaliu, sent a letter of protest to the Gymnastics Federation to contest the result after Maneca-Voinea, 17, decided to quit the sport. In a statement shared via Facebook, it was revealed that Maneca-Voinea made a “public declaration to give up practicing this sport as a result of today’s decision.”
Covaliu’s statement added: “The punctual evaluation modules agree and refuse the integral proposition of motive since the regulation involves grave prejudices in the imagination of international sport, which has a particular impact on sport, which risks to cause serious harm to the international sports imagination. The sports media of international level, publicly declaring their renunciation of sportive practice, can follow a decision of mandatory moral factors for the analysis, fundamental and communication decision of a final decision.”
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Maneca-Voinea’s mother, Camelia Voinea, also thinks her daughter was unfairly judged.
Sabrina Maneca-Voinea. Naomi Baker/Getty Images
“Sabrina did not leave the mat for any acrobatic line, they are all here, she deserves a medal,” Voinea, herself a silver medalist, wrote via Facebook in Romanian. “We have interrupted gymnastics here today, no one is fighting for our rights! We love all of you infinitely who have supported us ❤️. That’s all I could take!”
Former Olympians have weighed in on the side of the Romanian gymnasts, urging a thorough reconsideration of the scores.
“We have to clarify for Sabrina, because this child worked very hard,” Romanian gymnastics legend Nadia Comăneci told Euronews Romania. “For me, the biggest dilemma is Sabrina Voinea because everyone didn’t know what was happening with the one-tenth deduction. It is a deduction in neutral, minus a tenth that is usually given when you are off the carpet.”
Comăneci, 62, added, “I looked at the video now, the corners, the video that NBC sent. They didn’t understand why that deduction was either. I asked the head umpire and she said she put the heel on. I haven’t seen any pictures of [her] putting the heel on [out of bounds].”
The prime minister of Romania, Marcel Ciolacu, will also boycott the Paris Olympics’ closing ceremony in protest.
“I decided not to attend the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics, following the scandalous situation in the gymnastics, where our athletes were treated in an absolutely dishonorable manner,” Ciolacu, 56, said in a social media statement. “To withdraw a medal earned for honest work on the basis of an appeal … is totally unacceptable!”
Ciolacu continued, “[Ana and Sabrina,] you have with you an entire nation for which your work and tears are more precious than any medal, no matter what precious metal they are from.”
