i quit sports!

Munteanu positively torturing me with this perfect switch half

Andreea Munteanu: 14.366

Andreea Munteanu, ROU

How gorgeous is Andreea Munteanu tho

‘Romania’ and 'beautiful’ seem to do hand in hand.

Just rewatched 2014 Euros TF and remembered what a gem Munteanu was. Clean, great extension and amplitude in the leaps, nice choreo and expression, solid tumbling and lots potential for more. Most importantly, you can tell she loves what she’s doing. Its a shame they let this one get away.

they had a gold medal team that year and then completely blew the talent of most of it. Andreea, Silvia, and Stefania all deserved better. And heck, it obviously wasn’t Didi’s fault alone that she’s been injured 60% of the time since London. Then there is Larisa who won 4 medals that Euros. Including those 5, there are still so many potential girls who could have been capable of making a successful Olympic team last year, but noooo RGF just keeps pushing talent straight out the door. I feel sorry for the girls, but RGF deserves what they’ve gotten.

In the last 30 days or so, TVR made a series called ‘Fairytale Champions’, showing every day short videos about different Romanian gymnasts and their accomplishments. Yesterday, I saw the video they made for Andreea Munteanu. It kinda rubbed me the wrong way. While in other videos, they only have nice things to say about gymnasts, here’s what they said about Andreea’s senior career.

‘In Sofia, with her beam and floor scores, Andreea helped the team win gold. A year later, at the individial Euros in Montpellier, even if she couldn’t perform a perfect routine in the beam final, and wobbles affected her execution score, the judges gave her the highest score. Due to her difficult skills, she got to the highest step of the podium. However, success, didn’t increase her confidence in her talent and worth. Fragile and shy, it became harder and harder for her to find her place at Izvorani. As time passed by, Andreea started being scared of difficult elements and was changing her mind. At an age when she had all her future in front of her, Andreea Munteanu gave up elite sports, being the last gymnasts to win European gold on beam, a gymnasts that carried on the tradition started by Nadia, in 1975, in Skien.’

I don’t know who wrote this, and I’m aware she’s not as accomplished as other gymnasts in the series who have Olympic medals (and who were highly praised in their videos), but is that all? ‘She went to Euros, didn’t have a great routine and wobbled, but still won gold, however that wasn’t enough to make her confident, she got mental blocks, so she retired anyway.’ Really?!? Is that all you have to say about the only gymnast to get a gold medal at a big international competition since 2014? A girl who happens to be one of the most talented and promising Romanian gymnasts of last quad? Great stuff! And it’s not like they had a lot of time to fill, and ran out of things to say about her. The video was one minute long. Was it necessary to talk about how she wobbled during her gold winning beam routine, or how she retired because she was not confident enough? Oh oh and no need to ask why no one helped her through her fears btw, like, what’s the point, right?

This is the first ‘official’ source for this story. So far the official version has been that she, like other girls in her generation, didn’t have the motivation to go on, but there have been rumors for a while about her starting to be scared of difficult moves in training, the Moldovans being the only ones not to give up on her.

Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if Romania had proper and good coaching last quad? Like Jurca, Iordache, Munteanu, Iridon, Zarzu would made it to the Olympics and they would be in a very good shape. Imo they would find for silver medal.

Can you imagine Alexandrov going to Romania and be head coach of a national team?

Romania would be great again. Ohhh hopes and dreams.

Team Romania || 2013 - 2016 quad

13 European Championships medals → 2014 TF gold, Larisa Iordache (2013 - AA silver, VT silver, BB gold, FX silver,  2014 -  VT bronze, BB silver, FX gold), Diana Bulimar (2013 - BB silver, FX bronze), Andreea Munteanu (2015 - BB gold), Catalina Ponor (2016 - BB bronze, FX bronze)

4 World Championships medals → Larisa Iordache (2013 - FX bronze, 2014 - AA silver, FX silver, 2015 - AA bronze)

2 European Games medals → Andreea Iridon (2015 - UB bronze, BB silver)

Andreea Munteanu playing with my emotions. This is from 2013.

#TBT - Team Romania reign as European champions once more in 2014