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SIMONA AMÂNAR
Simona Amânar (born October 7, 1979 in Constanta) is a Romanian gymnast. A seven-time Olympic medalist,
she is one of the most accomplished gymnasts in recent decades, as well as the Romanian team leader during the late 1990s and 2000.
Amânar began participating in gymnastics at age 6.
In 1994, her first year on the senior national team, she was known primarily as a team player and contributed to the 1994 World and
European Romanian team titles.
She began to excel as an individual performer at the 1995 European Cup, placing 2nd all-around behind
Svetlana Khorkina, as well as winning gold on both vault and floor. She continued her success
at the World Championships that year, helping to secure the 2nd consecutive World team title for the Romanians, and becoming co-world champion
on vault (with all-around champion Lilia Podkopayeva). Simona was in the running to medal,
or even win the all-around title, after her powerful floor routine and huge vaults put her in the lead after two rotations. However,
she dropped to 4th overall after an average bar routine, and a shaky beam routine. Though Simona was certainly not heralded as a graceful
athlete, she was enormously powerful and praised for her ultra-clean form (the latter of which seemed to abandon her in later years and drew
much criticism).
In 1995, Amânar won the silver medal on vault at the individual apparatus World Championships behind teammate
Gina Gogean and ahead of Cuban Annia Portuondo (later Annia Hatch of the USA).
At the 1996 Summer Olympics, Simona was one of the front-runners to contend for several individual medals. However, her Olympics
started inauspiciously as she fell off the beam during the compulsories. Though she would later post the highest all-around score during the
optionals (39.387), Simona still only placed 4th amongst her teammates and did not qualify for the all-around finals. However, in a scenario
similar to the 1992 Olympic substitution by the Unified Team of Tatiana Gutsu for
Rozalia Galiyeva, Simona replaced her teammate Alexandra Marinescu,
which was legal at the Atlanta Olympics although it had not been in Barcelona. Head coach Octavian Belu stated that Simona deserved to compete because
she worked harder and was a better athlete than Marinescu. However, the fact that she posted the highest four event total of the entire Olympics,
a 39.387 during Optionals, didn't hurt. The decision looked to be the correct one, as she shared the bronze medal with teammate
Lavinia Milosovici.
Strangely enough, however, in both the 1996 Olympic All-Around and the 1995 World Championship All-Around, Amânar failed to score
over the 9.800 mark on the floor exercise despite well-executed and extremely difficult tumbling. Both times, it was due to problems with
her dance elements. In Atlanta, for example, she scored a 9.887 in Optionals (the highest score of the entire Olympics, on any event, for
men or women) and then only a 9.737 in the All-Around. She lost a tenth and a half from her potential, a significant amount, largely due
to a failure to complete a simple "C" valued dance element, a double turn. Without the error, Amânar would have finished well ahead of
her more established compatriots, Gogean and Milosovici. Her failure to score well on the floor was also evident when she failed to qualify
for the event finals on floor in Sabae (and then it would happen again two years later at the 1997 World Championships).
In the event finals, Amânar finally delivered to her potential on floor at the right time. Her routine earned a 9.850 and the silver
medal behind Lilia Podkopayeva and just ahead of Dominique Dawes. But her crowning moment came the
day before when she became the Olympic vault champion, largely due to her scoring a 9.875 for an enormous double-twisting Yurchenko vault.
She left the 1996 Olympics with four total medals.
Ironically, Amânar would again replace a higher performing Marinescu in the 1997 World All-Around Championships. Again proving her
coaches just in their decision, she won the silver medal behind Svetlana Khorkina of Russia. She actually performed better and scored higher
than Khorkina on three of the four pieces, but the discrepancy between their bars performances gave the title to Khorkina (It is Khorkina's
strongest event, and Simona's weakest). Further, Simona's vaulting score was not as high as in previous all-around competition due to a rule
change that required the athletes to perform two different vaults in all-around competition. Simona's second vault — a Phelps — was
a considerable weakness for her. Nevertheless, she continued her dominance on the vault, becoming the reigning two time World champion and
Olympic champion on the event. Romania also won its third straight team title.
Though Amânar continued to be a strong leader and competitor for the Romanian team, she seemingly always placed second or third in
the world in major All-Around competitions.
The 1999 World Championships were disappointing for her. After leading the team to a fourth consecutive team title, she fell off the bars
during the all-around and placed well out of the medals. She also relinquished 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 eventually learned this vault by 2000, but only competed it at Europeans.
Amânar's younger, more inexperienced teammates carried the banner for the Romanians —
Maria Olaru surprisingly won the all-around, and Andreea Raducan
won the World title on floor exercise. Amânar managed to capture her first ever (and only) World Championship medal on the floor, however,
taking home the silver behind Raducan.
At the 2000 Summer Olympics, the Romanians once again edged out the Russians to take the team title — their first since 1984 and their
first ever in a non-boycotted Olympics. The truly unprecedented events were yet to unfold. Shockingly, the vaulting horse was set too low by
the Olympic organizers before the Women's All-Around. The undisputed favourite for the all-around title, Svetlana Khorkina, fell on her
signature vault. Several other gymnasts in the competition met peril because of this same scenario. Many of them went on to their next event
knowing their medal chances were gone, only later to be informed of the error and their chance to vault again. By that point, it was too late.
The three Romanian women, Raducan, Amânar, and Olaru, managed either to vault well on the faulty vault or to vault after the mistake had
been corrected. They swept the medals, with Raducan winning the title, followed by Amânar and Maria Olaru.
Everything only became even more bizarre when it was discovered that Raducan had used a cold medicine containing a banned substance.
Although she was not banned and her results in other events were allowed to stand, Raducan was stripped of her gold medal which went to
Amânar instead. Initially, Simona refused to accept the medal, insisting that Raducan had rightfully earned the title. Teammate Maria
Olaru took the same stance when the gold was awarded to her, as well. The two eventually reconsidered, deciding instead to bring the medals
home to Romania as symbolic victories of the team. Simona later returned the gold medal to her teammate Raducan.
In the event finals, Amânar had the rare opportunity to defend her Olympic title from four years earlier. However, she stumbled
badly while debuting a new vault — a 2 1/2 twisting laid-out Yurchenko, which was then named after her, and her medal hopes were erased.
She redeemed herself, in part, by winning the bronze on floor exercise, but may have placed higher had it not been for a step out of bounds on
her last tumbling pass.
Throughout her career, Amânar was criticized for her stoicism and the robotic qualities to her gymnastics. Indeed, she did not
possess the same elegant style that favored her longtime nemesis Svetlana Khorkina, and perhaps prevented her from ever winning a major
all-around title. Rather, she was a power athlete, showing exceptional difficulty on vault and floor but with less strength on bars and beam.
Nevertheless, she maintained a hugely successful career at the highest ranks of the sport for over five years, and individual medals were
certainly forthcoming. Amânar ranks highly on the list of most medaled gymnasts ever, with 17 World and Olympic medals. She is also
considered one of the best vaulters in the history of the sport. Furthermore, in Romanian gymnastics where the top priority is team dominance,
Amânar played a crucial role in the four straight World team titles and Olympic title which firmly stamped Romania as the number one
ranked in the world. She appeared nude in the December 2005 issue of Playboy Magazine. The January 2006 issue contained no less
than three editorials complaining that Playboy has no business publishing pictures of women with stronger leg muscles than the
majority of its constituent subscribers.
Amânar retired in 2000 shortly after the Olympics, saying it was the right time to retire. She married Cosmin Tabara, a lawyer,
on March 9, 2002, in Timisoara. She gave birth to a baby boy on August 20, 2002, and named him Alexandru Iosif. She still resides in
Romania, as of 2006.
For more information, visit her biography at romanian-gymnastics.com
or her profile page on the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique website.
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