Athlete of the Week: Gymnast Larisa Iordache

At the end of last week, the city of Ploiesti, in southern Romania, played venue for the National Gymnastics Championships, a competition dominated by Larisa Iordache and Vlad Cotuna.

Florin Orban, 05.09.2017, 13:04

Larisa Iordache and Cristian Bataga also from the Romanian delegation, compelled recognition in the competition’s all round events. Larisa Iordache also reaped trophies in the floor, beam and uneven bars events while Denisa Golgota won the vault contest. In the men’s competition, Vlad Cotuna, also from the Romanian delegation took gold in the floor, bars and rings events.

Veteran gymnast Marian Dragulescu became gold medallist in the vault contest, while Andrei Ursache and Cristian Bataga won the pommel horse and high bar events. Larisa Iordache won most of the competition’s medals along with the RRI’s Athlete of the Week title granted to the best Romanian sporting performance in the week that passed.

This remarkable gymnast was born on June 19th 1996 in Bucharest and took up gymnastics in Deva, central Romania. She later joined Romania’s Olympic team and made her debut in the European Gymnastics Championships hosted by Brussels in 2012, from where she walked away with three medals: gold in the floor and team events and silver in the beam contest.

At the Olympic Games in London she stepped onto the podium’s third step together with the Romanian team. At the European championships hosted by Moscow in 2013 she became gold medallist in the beam event walking away with silver from the floor, vault and individual all round events. In the same year at the World Championships in Anvers, she won bronze in the floor contest. The year 2014 brought her gold at the European Championships in Sofia, which she won in the floor event and with the team, silver in the beam and bronze in the vault event.

She also won silver in the individual all round and floor events of the World Championships held in Nanning, China. In the following year she reaped bronze in the world championships hosted by Glasgow. 2016 was a bad year in her career as injuries prevented her from participating in any competition.

She made a comeback in 2017 with a bronze medal in the beam event of the European Championships held in Cluj, Western Romania; then she got gold in the individual all round and floor events at the University Games in Taipei, Taiwan.