Romania will be represented at the 2015 European Youth Olympic Festival by Olivia Cimpian, Ioana Crisan and Andreea Ciurusniuc. The three have been selected after placing in the (unofficial) top three all around at the recent Junior Team Nationals. The competition took place at the end of June in Onesti and was, besides the team competition of the national clubs, the qualifier to the Junior Individual Nationals that will take place in late autumn.
Ioana Crisan placed 1st all around with a total score of 56.650, followed by Olivia Cimpian (56.350) and Andreea Ciurusiuc (55.950). Both Crisan and Cimpian are 2001 babies and train at Deva alongside the younger national team members, with Ciurusniuc the sole Rio hope (born in 2000) training with the jr national team at Izvorani.
Deceptively frail, with long limbs and balletic allure, Olivia Cimpian was noticed by the fans as soon as she joined the National Junior team. It was an easy spot: a former rhythmic gymnast she was wonderfully flexible and had the best posture, looking more like a little ballerina than like a gymnast. As years passed she maintained her artistic qualities and took plenty of advantage of her background but also added steady conditioning and thorough training.
Now she as powerful as the other two team mates that will join her in Georgia for the EYOF. On floor she might actually have the highest difficulty of the three: she starts off with a full in pike followed by a full in tuck, connected by beautiful and ample choreography. She flows into more ballet inspired choreo and beautiful leaps – switch ring leap to Ferrari, her last two passes are well controlled as well – triple twist and double pike to finish. This routine is complex and very ambitious aiming to combine Olivia’s best qualities – power, long lines, outstanding mobility. My only complaint is that she has the same music as the one Anastasia Grishina used in 2012, the theme song from “Goodbye Again”. I believe that by using the same music she is forcing a comparison with Grishina. The risk is that, when one starts to be compared with one the most exquisite gymnasts in recent years (presentation-wise) one will lose the battle and risk seeming a tad less refined than one actually is.
Among the three, Ioana Crisan is closest to what you would expect from a Romanian junior in terms of phisical qualities, style and technical range. She is petite yet strong looking, has clean technique and good form. Crisan has dominated the national meets for the past two years in her age group, becoming Junior National Champion in the all around, in 2013 and 2014. She is also dominating the ranks on beam and vault and maintains among the best of her country, with national individual medals, on bars and floor too.
In terms of technical elements, Crisan is at a good level for her age: a clean and easy looking full twisting Yurchenko, Tkachev, Pak and a very easy full in dismount on bars; her beam is, as you would expect the highlight in terms of difficulty: flick – loso – loso, whip – layout to two feet, aerial walkover. On floor she does a cutsey routine with energetic leaps and big tumbling: full in, 2 ½ twist, double back pike, double tuck.
Andreea Ciurusniuc was somewhat of a cult phenomenon among the Romanian gymnastics fans, circa 2012-2013 when she was doing a bars routine with multiple releases and a full in dismount. She was just 12 years old back then, and this was unusual because at that age most, Romanian juniors would have at most C-rated skills in their routines. But although Andreea was doing more difficult elements, she also had major form issues and breaks, thus the hype and the controversy surrounding her. But her physical qualities and courage were undeniable and she was added to the national junior team, where she steadily developed. Now she still has the difficult skills (I believe she has added a couple more) but she cleaned up her form and improved her technique.
These are Romania’s gymnasts for 2015 EYOF: they will likely post three solid FTYs, a couple of decent bars routines in the 13s or close enough, a sound beam rotation with a great score for Crisan if she hits (she hasn’t at nationals but her D is already 6+), while Cimpian will be tough to beat on floor on a good day. It is overall a solid team that could even threaten Russia’s place as a defending team EYOF gold medallist, and should also claim quite a few spots in the event finals.
The three have in common the fact that they are solid all arounders as demonstrated by their results in national and international competitions throughout the years. However, in terms of style and presentation they are quite different from one another: Ioana Crisan is the old-school product of Romanian-gymnastics (and I mean this i the most flattering way), Cimpian is the “ballerina”, while Ciurusniuc is the daredevil, the surprise element.
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Side note: Looking at this team and also at the results of the recent National meet, it looks that as of right now, Deva is the future of the Romanian programme. Remember that in late 2012 all the up and coming gymnasts that were also eligible for the 2016 Olympics moved to Izvorani. This makes you wonder, how come the crème de la crème of the talented juniors moved to Izvorani, yet Deva, with younger gymnasts have better results in the pre-olympic year?
How come the likes of Anda Butuc, Asiana Peng, Andra Soica, Cristina Vrabie all very promising gymnasts, training at Izvorani, all born in 2000, all competed well last year at Jr Euros (or in the meets leading to) are not on this EYOF team? At June nationals they either did just one event or didn’t compete at all.
Although it should be mentioned that most of these girls had a big school exam in the second half of June, just days before the competition in Onesti and that we also know that there have been some health issues too, with both Cristina Vrabie and Asiana Peng suffering elbow surgeries this year (and these are just the juniors we know of), this should raise some eyebrows regarding how the junior programme at Izvorani is doing.
Acticle and cover picture by: Bea Gheorghisor