Gymnastics is the sport of using your body to do amazing balancing, leaping and twisting on different pieces of equipment. Women's gymnastics has four events: the vault (a sprint and a flip), the uneven bars (swinging between two bars), the balance beam (dancing along a 10 cm wide beam four feet off the floor), and the floor exercise (a tumbling routine with music).
Romanian coaches became famous in the 1970s for the way they taught gymnastics. They were patient and strict. They broke every hard move into tiny steps, and asked their gymnasts to do each step thousands of times until it became as easy as walking.
Many of Romania's Olympic gymnasts started training when they were five or six years old. They went to special schools where they did normal lessons in the morning and trained for several hours in the afternoon. They worked very hard, but they were also kids - they had friends, did homework, and ate sarmale at family dinners.
Other famous Romanian gymnasts include Simona Amânar, Andreea Răducan, Cătălina Ponor and Sandra Izbașa - all Olympic gold medallists. Romanian boys have also produced champions like Marius Urzică. Today, a new generation of Romanian gymnasts is training in gyms all over the country, hoping to follow them.