EYOF 2013: 4 medals for the Romanian Juniors

Juniors Andreea Iridon, Laura Jurca and Silvia Zarzu, together with Bogdan Necșa, Ovidiu Prichindel and Robert Ghiuzan travelled to Utrecht to compete at the 2013 edition of the European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF). Romania had dominated the previous edition, winning 4 gold and 5 silver medals (among the 2011 competitors, Larisa Iordache and Daniel Rădeanu) so expectations were high this time around too.

Andreea Iridon. Photo © Jan de Koning

Unfortunately, the competition didn´t start off that well for Romania. The men’s team competition (which also counted as qualification for the All-around and event finals) saw a poor performance from the Romanian team who finished 19th overall and failed to qualify to any event final. The competition ended for them on the very first day…

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The girls did much better and won the bronze medal of the team competition, although they didn’t show a clean performance either with mistakes on uneven bars and vault (Russia and Great Britain placed first and second, respectively). On a positive note, Laura Jurca presented her first double twisting Yurchenko in an official competition – and a pretty good one for that matter – and so did Silvia – although her execution is still very poor. Beam and floor were Romania’s best rotations, with the girls also making event finals here (Silvia and Andreea on floor, Laura and Andreea on beam).

These two vaults also helped Laura make the vault and the All-around finals:

Laura was Romania’s only All-arounder at this competition as neither Andreea nor Silvia performed four routines (in an interview for The Couch Gymnast, coach Cristian Moldovan explained that Andreea had not been training vault lately due to an elbow problem). Laura went into the final in third position following Great Britain’s Tyesha Mattis and Russia’s Maria Kharenkova but couldn’t manage to hold that position, scoring lower than in qualification to place 7th overall. She looked happy, though, with her beam routine:

Event finals saw Romania add three more medals to its collection after the girls placed on the podium of each apparatus they competed on. Laura competed first, winning a well-deserved silver medal on vault and claiming the title of the best Romanian Junior on this apparatus – she has two more years to improve before she turns Senior. Andreea was one of the clear candidates for gold on beam – her strongest apparatus – but she did not look very confident overall at this competition. That being said, she went out and won the bronze medal on this apparatus behind Russia´s Bondareva and the Netherlands´ Thorsdottir. It was then Silvia´s time to make the podium and she did so on her best apparatus, floor. Although she doesn´t look as strong as she did last year at the Brussels Junior Europeans (silver on this apparatus), she managed to win the bronze medal here with the highest difficulty score of the final (5.6). Silvia will be a Senior next year so she needs all the competitions she can get…

Here are the scores and links to the girls´ routines:

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