Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
n former artistic gymnast. She is the 2000 Olympic all-around champion, and a seven-time Olympic and ten-time
World Championship
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game ...
medalist. Amânar helped Romania win four consecutive world team titles (1994–1999), as well as the 2000 Olympic team title. She has a vault named after her, one of the most difficult in women's gymnastics, and was inducted into the
International Gymnastics Hall of Fame
The International Gymnastics Hall of Fame, located in Oklahoma City, USA, is a hall of fame dedicated to honoring the achievements and contributions of the world's greatest competitors, coaches and authorities in artistic gymnastics.
The early IG ...
In 1994, her first year on the senior national team, Amânar contributed to Romania's team titles at the
World
The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...
and
European Championships
A European Championship is the top level international sports competition between European athletes or sports teams representing their respective countries or professional sports clubs.
In the plural, the European Championships also refers t ...
.
Amânar began to excel as an individual performer at the 1995 European Cup, placing second in the all-around behind Svetlana Khorkina of Russia and winning gold on both vault and floor exercise. At the 1995 World Championships, she helped Romania secure its second consecutive world team title and became co-champion on vault (with all-around winner
Lilia Podkopayeva
Lilia Oleksandrivna Podkopayeva (; born 15 August 1978) is a Ukrainian former artistic gymnast. She is the 1995 world all-around champion, and the 1996 Olympic all-around and floor exercise champion. Often thought of as a complete athlete, Pod ...
of Ukraine). Amânar's powerful floor routine and vaults put her in the lead after two rotations in the all-around, but she dropped to fourth after an average
uneven bars
The uneven bars or asymmetric bars is an artistic gymnastics apparatus. It is made of a steel frame. The bars are made of fiberglass with wood coating, or less commonly wood. The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is UB or ...
routine and a shaky
balance beam
The balance beam is a rectangular artistic gymnastics apparatus and an event performed using the apparatus. The apparatus and the event are sometimes simply called "beam". The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is BB. The bal ...
1996 Summer Olympics
The 1996 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXVI Olympiad, also known as Atlanta 1996 and commonly referred to as the Centennial Olympic Games) were an international multi-sport event held from July 19 to August 4, 1996, in Atlanta, ...
, Amânar was one of the front-runners for several individual medals, but her Olympics started inauspiciously when she fell off the beam during the compulsories. Though she later posted the highest all-around score in the optionals (39.387, her lowest score being a 9.800 on the balance beam), her combined compulsory and optionals scores put her fourth among her teammates, and she did not qualify for the final. However, in a scenario similar to the Unified Team's substitution of Tatiana Gutsu for Rozalia Galiyeva at the 1992 Olympics, Amânar replaced her teammate Alexandra Marinescu in the all-around final. The Romanian head coach,
Octavian Bellu
Octavian Ioan Atanase Bellu (; born 17 February 1951) is the current head of the Romanian national women's artistic gymnastics team.
He was the main coach, with interruptions, from 1990 to 2005Lavinia Miloşovici, behind Gogean.
In both the 1996 Olympic all-around and the 1995 World Championships all-around, Amânar failed to score over 9.800 on the floor exercise despite well-executed and difficult tumbling. In the Olympics, she scored a 9.887 in the team optionals (the highest score of the entire Olympics on any event, for men or women), but only a 9.737 in the all-around. She did not start from a 10.0 in the all-around—despite having the most tumbling bonus points of anyone at the Games—because her tour jeté half-turn ( Strug), a C element, was not completed. Thus, she did not have enough simple A, B, and C skills, and much of her D- and E-rated tumbling had to count as easier elements to fulfill those requirements. Amânar did not perform a double turn in the team optionals or the all-around because it was not necessary as long as she completed her Strug. However, when she failed to complete the Strug, four of her six tenths in D and E elements had to count toward requirements, which left her with only .2 counting toward her bonus. Without the error, Amânar would have finished ahead of Gogean and Miloşovici.
In the event finals, Amânar completed her Strug and added a double turn to fulfill the more stringent Competition III requirements. She earned a 9.850 and the silver medal, behind Podkopayeva and just ahead of Dominique Dawes of the United States. She won the vault final the day before, largely because of her 9.875 score for her double-twisting Yurchenko vault. She left the 1996 Olympics with four medals, including Romania's team bronze.
1997–1999
Romania won its third straight team title at the 1997 World Championships. Amânar again replaced a higher-scoring Marinescu in the all-around competition and won the silver medal behind Russia's Khorkina, followed by a gold medal on vault.
In the 1999 World Championships, Amânar led the Romanian team to a fourth consecutive title (there was no Worlds competition in 1998). However, she fell off the bars during the all-around and placed well out of the medals. She also lost her vaulting title to Russia's Elena Zamolodchikova, who dominated that event in the following years due to a more difficult second vault: a double-twisting Tsukahara. Amânar won her only medal of the competition on the floor, taking home the silver behind teammate Andreea Răducan.
2000
At the
2000 Summer Olympics
The 2000 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, officially branded as Sydney 2000, and also known as the Games of the New Millennium, were an international multi-sport event held from 15 September to 1 October ...
, the Romanians edged out the Russians to take the team title—their first since
1984
Events
January
* January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888.
* January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...
and their first ever in a non-boycotted Olympics.
In the all-around, the vaulting horse was set too low by the Olympic organizers, and the favorite for the title, Svetlana Khorkina, fell on her signature vault. Several other gymnasts fell or stumbled because of the same problem. Many went on to make mistakes on their next event, knowing their medal chances were gone, only to be informed later of the error and their chance to vault again. The three Romanian women either managed to perform well on the faulty vault or vaulted after the mistake had been corrected. They swept the medals, with Răducan winning the gold, Amânar the silver, and Maria Olaru the bronze.
Răducan was subsequently found to have used a cold medicine containing a banned substance. Although her results in other events were allowed to stand, she was stripped of her all-around gold medal, which went to Amânar. Initially, Amânar refused to accept the medal, insisting that Răducan had rightfully earned the title. Olaru took the same stance when the silver was awarded to her. However, they eventually reconsidered and decided to bring the medals home to Romania as symbolic victories of the country. Amânar continued to insist, however, that Răducan was the true Olympic all-around champion.
In the event finals, Amânar had the opportunity to defend her Olympic vault title from four years earlier. However, she stumbled badly while debuting a new vault (a 2 twisting laid-out Yurchenko, which was then named after her), and did not win a medal. She went on to win bronze on floor exercise after losing points for a step out of bounds on her last tumbling pass.
Legacy
Amânar ranks highly (117th) on the list of most medal gymnasts in the world, with 10 World and 7 Olympic medals. She played a large role in the four consecutive World team titles and Olympic title that established Romania as the top-ranked women's gymnastics team in the world.
The '' Amanar'' vaultFIG Women's Artistic Gymnastics Code of Points 2009–2012, page 163 involves a round-off entry onto the vaulting table followed by a laid-out salto with 2 twists. Amânar first competed this skill at the 2000 Olympics. It has a difficulty score of 6.5, 6.3 and 5.8 in the women's 2009–2012, 2013–2016 and 2017–2020 Code of Points.
Post-retirement
Amânar retired in 2000, shortly after the Olympic Games. She married Cosmin Tabără, a lawyer, on 9 March 2002, in
Timișoara
Timișoara (, , ; , also or ; ; ; see #Etymology, other names) is the capital city of Timiș County, Banat, and the main economic, social and cultural center in Western Romania. Located on the Bega (Tisza), Bega River, Timișoara is consider ...
, and gave birth to a son, Alexandru Iosif, five months later. She is the vice president of the
Romanian Gymnastics Federation The Romanian Gymnastics Federation (RGF), or Gymnastics Federation of Romania, is the governing body of gymnastics in Romania. Established in 1906, it supervises gymnastics clubs and gymnasts' participation in international competitions. In 2013, Ad ...