BUCHAREST, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Former world and Olympic champion Andreea Raducan was almost unanimously elected president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation on Friday.
Raducan, 33, won the mandate for the 2017-2021 legislature with 42 votes for, one being cancelled, out of the 43 affiliated members of the federation present at the General Assembly elections.
The elected new head of Romanian gymnastics called for unity to bring the national sport where it should be, stressing that the current federation team "eroded in time".
"I have set up a new team to combine the enthusiasm of young people with experience. I wish everyone to be responsible because there is a lot of work and we all know that performance cannot be achieved without work and discipline," said Raducan.
Gymnastics remains the most medalist sport in Romania, and the female gymnastics team has won at least one medal at each edition since 1976, including three gold, while the female gymnasts have won 49 individual medals - including 21 gold - in the latest 40 years. Unfortunately, the traditional gymnastics powerhouse has missed out on a place in the women's team for the Summer Games in Rio, for the first time in almost half a century.
Raducan follows Adrian Stoica, who has chaired the federation for the past 11 years and decided not to run for re-election.
Raducan, as one of the outstanding gymnasts of the Romanian team in the late 1990s, was known both for her difficult repertoire of skills and her dance and presentation. Over her four-year senior career, she won Olympic or World Championships medals on every event except the uneven bars and earned three individual World Championships titles, on the floor exercise in 1999 and 2001 and the balance beam in 2001.
She was also the original winner of the all-around title at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but was stripped of her gold medal shortly after the competition concluded, as the two cold medicine pills she had been given by a Romanian team physician contained pseudoephedrine, a banned substance.
The case generated a significant amount of media attention, Raducan herself was exonerated of any personal wrongdoing by the relevant national and international institutions, but her medal was not reinstated.
