update 10

THE PROFILE OF THE NEW CHAMPION 1999

PROFILE:
Maria Olaru was born on June 4, 1982 in Falticeni (ROM). Her father died when she was three. She has two older sisters.
She went to train at Deva (the national training center) when she was only seven years old. She was too young to compete at the 1996
Olympics and at the World Championships in 1997, too.

MARIA OLARU (Romania)
olaru_profil.jpg (19517 Byte)

Fotos by
Mathias Wendt/ © Gymview Berlin

Maria won fame as a junior competitor, finishing 5th at the junior European
championships in Birmingham 1996, 1st in vault. 1998 she won the silver medal in the European senior competitions in St.Petersburg.

Maria loves Italy, and can speak some Italian. She is a powerful vaulter and tumbler, so she vaults in Tianjin a double
twisting Yurchenko, and was rumoured to be training a 2 1/2 twisting one.

The second Romanian All around World Title in history...

by Nora Schuler and Sandra Schmidt in Tianjin

Maria Olaru's consistency was the key to her world title: "I was justmore stable than the other gymnasts, I may not have had spectacular routines,but I was stable."
The 17-year-old who towers head and shoulders above her mostly tiny competitors (Olaru's height is given as 1.62m) was impressive on vault and floor where her original choreography is a revelation. Romanian coach Octavian Belu said he was mainly concerned with keeping Olaru focused during the competition: " I talked about different things with Maria during the competition to keep her mind of gymnastics."
Second placed Viktoria Karpenko (UKR) won her first major international AA medal after a long string of injuries and disappointments. " I' ve had a lot of injuries and it was really difficult for me to overcome them. I'm very satisfied with my performance and my results." The 18-year-old Kherson native had to attend the press confenrence without her personal coach Oleg Ostapenko who left the arena immediately after the competition. Karpenko was instead accompanied by Ukrainian judge Lyudmila Korolenko who coaches Ukrainian alternate Galina Tyryk.

The titleholder from 1997 Svetlana Khorkina (RUS) might have been done with her day's competition after bars, but still found the time and energy to chalk the bars for Simona Amanar (ROM), who followed the former world champion on uneven bars. Funnily enough, Octavian Belu somehow found time during the competition to be on the podium with Germany's Birgit Schweigert during her uneven bars routine while Schweigert's personal coach Zhanna Polyakova looked on. (- from Tianjin : by Nora Schuler / Sandra Schmidt)

German report from the AA rotations / In deutsch: Wettkampfverlauf

ALL AROUND RESULTS, WOMEN

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(GYMmedia
translated by N.Schuler)