First she celebrated. Then the young Romanian gymnast checked the scoreboard_ and she looked hard. Her mood abruptly changed and she put her head in her hands and was led off the stage in tears.
It was the moment when 18-year-old Ana Barbosu realized she had been denied a place on the podium and many in Romania were outraged.
Sensing the mood, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said he would boycott the Paris Olympic closing ceremony after ‘a terrible scene” that cost the young Romanian gymnast a bronze medal.
So what happened? Ana Barbosu had already begun celebrating her bronze medal for the floor event on Monday when coaches for U.S. gymnast Jordan Chiles, 23, entered an appeal to judges over Chiles’ score.
Following the inquiry, Chiles score was boosted by 0.1 and scooped Barbosu to take the bronze and a place on the Olympic podium.
Explaining his decision, the prime minister said the loss showed that “somewhere in the system of organizing this competition, something is wrong.”
“I decided not to attend the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics, following the scandalous situation in the gymnastics, where our athletes were treated in an absolutely dishonorable manner,” the Romanian prime minister wrote in a Facebook post. “To withdraw a medal earned for honest work on the basis of an appeal … is totally unacceptable!”
In a related development, another Romanian gymnast Sabrina-Maneca Voinea who was also denied a chance to win a bronze medal in the gymnastics floor final after she allegedly stepped outside the box said she would quit gymnastics.
According to a statement released by the official Olympic committee of Romania, Voinea has decided to ‘give up’ on gymnastics after the judges denied her appeal to have her final score overturned. She later said she had reconsidered and would continue.
Romanian former gymnast Nadia Comaneci who scored the first ever perfect 10 in the 1976 Montreal Olympics called for a review of the way the points had been awarded.
Seeking to reassure angry Romanians, Mr. Ciolacu said that Romania would honor Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea who came fifth as Olympic medalists, “including in terms of the prizes.”
“You have with you an entire nation for which your work and tears are more precious than any medal, no matter what precious metal they are from,” Ciolacu said.
