Word: rumanians
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...geopolitical considerations being what they are, the beholder can cast a blind or a jaundiced eye, or an indulgent one, depending upon where the gymnast is from. During the compulsory exercises on the balance beam, U.S. Coach Peters lodged four protests over marks given to the Americans by Rumanian Judge Julia Roterescu. But having gone 4 for 6 in the complaint department, Peters went 0 for 4 in the appeals process. Nonetheless, he had his point. Roterescu consistently gave the Americans scores as much as .4 and .5 of a point below those given by the other three judges...
During the second night's competition, the rest of the judges could only agree, if not in such inflated terms, with Roterescu's opinion of the Rumanian team's performance. At the same time, some of the U.S. stars were not at their best. Julianne McNamara, 18, forced to wait for more than five minutes while Roterescu's previous score provoked another judges' haggle, lost her concentration and fell doing a mount that she has not missed in years. Crashes are contagious, and the rest of the American team struggled to remain aboard during their...
...razzle-dazzle, Retton led the field at the beginning of the all-around competition with a cumulative score of 39.525 points. Just behind her, with 39.375, was Rumania's leading gymnast, Ecaterina Szabo, 17, a smoothly solid performer who rarely makes mistakes. Tied for third place were another Rumanian, Laura Cutina, 16, and McNamara, with...
Beginning on the beam, Szabo lived up to her reputation, and confirmed the Rumanian dominance of the event, by stepping up cold and calmly nailing a 10. She not only performed risky maneuvers flawlessly but managed to make her narrow ground seem like a stage for the Bolshoi Ballet. At one point she rolled off four consecutive backward handsprings, one more than the beam seems capable of containing and two more than any other gymnast tried. Retton's performance on the uneven bars, on the other hand, was, for her, mediocre. The judges gave...
Conveniently enough, Karolyi and his wife Marta had just defected from the Rumanian team during an American tour. They walked into the New York office of the Department of Immigration and Naturalization with no assets other than the suitcases in their hands and a world of gymnastics knowledge in their heads. They opened shop in Houston. A year later, having met Karolyi at a meet, Mary Lou and her parents packed her bags and drove 24 hours to Texas. "It was at Christmas time," Mary Lou recalls. "Leaving home was so hard...