Melita Ruhn (later Fleischer, born 19 April 1965) is a retired Romanian artistic gymnast who represented Romania at the 1980 Summer Olympics. She belongs to the German minority in Romania.
She won three Olympic medals (team, vault, uneven bars) for
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...
and scored a perfect ten for the vault optionals in the team competition of the 1980 Olympic Games. In 1979 she was a member of the first world gold medal-winning team of
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...
. She is also an all around and floor world bronze medalist.
Career
Ruhn took up gymnastics aged seven at Sport School Club Sibiu coached by Ana Crihan and Adrian Goreac. Later she trained with the national team in Deva under coach
Béla Károlyi
Béla Károlyi (; born September 13, 1942) is an ethnic Hungarian Romanian-American gymnastics coach. Early in his coaching career he developed the Romanian centralised training system for gymnastics. One of his earliest protégés was Nadia C ...
. Her first major international competition was the 1979 European Championships in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
where she placed fifth in the all-around final event.
Together with
Nadia Comăneci
Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner (born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976, at the age of 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 ...
,
Rodica Dunca
Rodica Dunca (later ''Kőszegi'', born 16 May 1965) is a retired Romanian artistic gymnast
Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses. The sport is governed by the Fé ...
,
Emilia Eberle
Gertrúd Emilia Eberle (; born 4 March 1964) is a retired Romanian gymnastics, gymnast of Banat Swabians, German-Hungarian descent.Dumitriţa Turner and Marilena Vlădărău, Ruhn was a member of the gold-winning team at the
1979 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
The 20th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships were held in Fort Worth, United States, in 1979. In November 1977 the 55th FIG Congress, held in Rome, changed the cycle of world championships: since 1979 they were to be held each two years, and ...
. This was the first time that Romania won the team event at the world championships and the second time the Soviet team had not won the world or the Olympic title since 1952."The Times" Coming of age in Fort Worth, 24 December 1979 Melita did all the four events and contributed with a difficult and risky routine on the uneven bars. Individually she won the bronze medals in the all around and in the floor event and placed seventh on vault and eighth on balance beam.
In 1980 she was a member of the silver-winning Romanian team at the 1980 Olympic Games. She revealed for a newspaper that just before the Moscow Olympics she fractured her ankle. The ankle was put in a cast, and coach Károlyi took it off before the vault event. She scored a 10 and the cast was placed back on her ankle. Besides winning silver with the team she won the bronze medal on vault and on uneven bars. The bronze on the uneven bars was a tie with
Steffi Kräker
Stefanie Biskupek-Kräker ( Kräker; 21 April 1960) is a German psychologist and retired gymnast who competed for East Germany at the 1976 and 1980 Olympic Games. Over her career she won four Olympic medals and six world championship medals ...
and
Maria Filatova
Maria Evgenievna Filatova (russian: Мария Евгеньевна Филатова) (born July 19, 1961) is a retired Soviet gymnast who competed at the 1976 and 1980 Olympics.
Career
Filatova began competing for the USSR junior team in 1974 ...
.
Post retirement
Ruhn retired from competitive gymnastics in 1982, when she was 17. She finished high school in her native Sibiu and left for Bucharest in 1984. She went to the sports university there, while also competing for her home club of CSS Sibiu for a short period. After she graduated from college, she had a boyfriend, who emigrated to Germany with his family in 1988. They wanted to get married but the Romanian communist government only gave them their approval two years later, so she only managed to leave Romania in 1990. In Germany she stayed for the first three months in a refugee camp near Nürnberg sharing the same room with six people. Then she was allowed to move in together with her boyfriend. The former gymnast started working as a custodian.