Andreea Palade (photo: ProSport)
Here's what ProSport had to say on the matter:
Palade and Guţu Left Off Team
Gymnasts Andreea Palade and Mădălina Guţu have been expelled from the national senior team in Deva. The decision taken by the coaching staff has been approved by the Executive Committee of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation.
"We have taken this step because until now, these two gymnasts have not lived up to expectations. We have given them many occasions to prove that they are long-term prospects, but to no avail. What is required of us is performances, not a nice and high number of gymnasts on the national team. The two gymnasts have returned to their club, but the door to the national team will always be open for them. If their attitude and motivation improve, we look forward to seeing them again," coach Nicolae Forminte told ProSport.
Mădălina Guţu and Andreea Palade hail from LPS Oneşti.
(Watch Guţu's floor routine at the 2007 Romanian Nationals here, and her beam routine at the 2008 GER-FRA-ROM meet here. A few quick glimpses of Andreea Palade can be seen here.)
Mădălina Guţu (photo: Stefan Wurzer/Gymnasticsunited)
I guess Romania's trying to take the gloves off so it can become more competitive with China and the USA. They also probably didn't want to keep people not considered "long-term prospects" for part of the season when they could be focusing on more promising gymnasts.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much of the issue was motivation and how much just talent/devlopment. If they just weren't good enough it might be nice to have let them go without the public remark about their motivation. Really, the only just reason for making such a statement is if they think that the girls might be able to develop on their own and come back.
ReplyDeleteOf course maybe there is something Machiavellian and they just want to motivate the others with fear. That seems unjust though.
BTW, I find that I can only get comments to come up if I try submitting twice. If others have same issue, this is depriving you of comments. It's why I used to think I was banned.
ReplyDeleteI also dislike having to select my profile each time instead of having it cookie like most other sites do.
I have the same problem with making comments. It never takes it the first time.
ReplyDeleteMy original post was relative to if there are comprehensive lists given by countries as to who is on their respective national training teams? For example, USA gymnastics has names and profiles of each of the national team members. If countries like Romania, Russia & China have sites like these, could you link to them?
Thanks so much!
Romania has an official gymnastic site but it is not updated in a long time:D
ReplyDeleteTCO, we're sure a lack of development has something to do with it. In fact, when we first posted the article, the third sentence read, "Andreea Palade and Mădălina Guţu have been sent home due to a lack of improvement." And then we read the article again and noticed it didn't say so anywhere, so we changed that sentence. But we're sure a lack of improvement/development was why the girls were expelled.
ReplyDeleteCidlover, we're not sure the girls' expulsion has anything to do with Romania wanting to be able to take on China and the USA. Expulsions like this are nothing new in Romanian gymnastics. Countless gymnasts have been sent home from Deva over the years. Admittedly, it usually happens to relatively new girls who have been found wanting, not to girls who have been at Deva for several years and have actually represented Romania abroad (as Guţu has), but still, it's hardly a new situation. And really, you can't blame the coaches or the Federation. It costs an awful lot of money to keep up a center like Deva. If the coaches feel a gymnast is not worth the money they're investing in her, they have a right to send her home, so that another good prospect can take her place. We just hope that Romania HAS other good prospects. Their recent crop of juniors doesn't impress us much.
Now as to the comments...
ReplyDeleteTCO and MS, we've looked at our settings, and we're afraid there's nothing we can change that will solve the problem. It seems to be a Blogger problem. Blogger just doesn't remember posters' IDs, meaning you'll have to select a profile each time you want to leave a comment. Also, Blogger seems to "time out" comments. We've noticed that our comments usually show up the first time around if we keep them short and don't take too much time writing them, but if we take a few minutes to write a comment, it will get timed out and we'll have to submit it twice. It's annoying, but we're afraid there's nothing we can do about it, short of contacting Blogger and asking if they can have a look at it. Which we'll do.
MS, unfortunately China, Russia and Romania do not have updated lists of national team members. Just before the Olympics the Chinese Olympic Committee provided short bios of the Olympic team members, complete with excellent high-res portraits, but as far as we know, there's no site listing all the national team members. Romania and Russia make the occasional attempt at providing useful information, but it seldom lasts long. Sadly, the USAG site appears to be the exception rather than the rule.
ReplyDeleteNo sweat. I don't like the new blogger settings, but hopefully they will improve it. I just think most people will not even realize that they can get the comment in by submitting twice. Feel a little bad that all your hard work is not being rewarded by comments. Perhaps if you turned off the setting for having the little word that you have to type (watch and see if comment spam is an issue and if so, turn it back on)? Anyhow, I'm fine and not complaining. Just don't want you to get frustrated and quit like TheC.
ReplyDeleteI think if you had a post with the backgrounds of the different authors here, who covers what languages, etc. that would be interesting. Europe is fascinating with all these different languages and countries and such. But of course, English is lingua franca, and we have a whole continent so there is little motivation to learn languages. Oh...and haha on the Frenchies. Lingua franca...get it!
ReplyDeleteTCO, we've done away with the little word requirement. Happy now? :)
ReplyDeleteWe may do a post on the backgrounds of our team members at some point, but for now, we'd like to focus on gymnastics if you don't mind!