Romania Athletics

She was on the balance beam when her coach, Florin Gheorghe, flew into a rage and slapped the tiny gymnast. Then he kicked her. He grabbed her by the neck and pounded her head against the beam, yelling, "This is going to teach you to get over your fear of the beam." Then, eventually, he killed her. Adriana Giurca was 11. The story of Adriana Giurca's death was largely ignored in this country, probably because it happened in Romania.

A 16-year-old Romanian pixie, Andreea Raducan, joined a trio of Bulgarian weightlifters and will be leaving the Olympics lighter than expected, losing an individual gold medal after testing positive for a banned substance. The gymnast's appeal was denied Thursday by a panel of three arbitrators from the Court of Arbitration for Sport. She is the first Olympic gymnast to be stripped of her gold medal.

Crawling through the mud and ice, owning nothing more valuable than the denim jacket on her back, Nadia Comaneci escaped across the Romanian border into Hungary on a winter night in 1989. If she ever returned home, those who knew of her plans to defect warned, soldiers would be waiting for her. As she disembarked from an airplane a week ago in Bucharest, she indeed was met by a military escort. But the soldiers were not there to arrest her.

Medals, medals, who has the medals? According to a Romanian television report, the Romanian gymnastics team, angry over the stripping of the all-around gold medal from 16-year-old Andreea Raducan, has returned the silver and bronze medals it also had won. According to Franklin Servan-Schreiber, spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, however, the medals have not been returned, and the Romanians are waiting for the results of Raducan's appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Former Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci said her defection just weeks before Romania's Communist government crumbled had so embarrassed leader Nicolae Ceausescu that he ordered her hunted down and brought back. Comaneci, 28, who surprised the world when she fled Romania, said she hopes to visit her homeland after its crisis ends. Ceausescu, the last of the ironclad Stalinist leaders in the Warsaw Pact countries, was executed with his wife Monday.

A spokesman for the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) said Thursday that the sport's governing body is aware that countries make deals to fix scoring in competitions, but said the collaboration is difficult to police. "Everybody is aware of this thing, but no one can prove it," said Frank Edmond, vice president of FIG. Edmond, reached in Bristol, England, was responding to a claim by Greg Marsden, former U.S.

From every revolution blossom legendary moments. Paul Revere's ride. Marie Antoinette's beheading. A lone Chinese man blocking the path of a Red Army tank in Tien An Men Square. Situations are magnified when performed in the theater of change. But sometimes, in this chaotic environment, circumstances become muddled and legends exaggerated. Last December, the world was entranced by an unfolding drama on the streets of Bucharest, Romania.

Like all Romanians who have left their countries, I've been reading and watching the news with particular fervor this autumn. Poland, Hungary, the Berlin Wall, Czechoslovakia . . . Nothing about Romania. At least nothing new about Romania. Until Nadia Comaneci, the most famous Romanian athlete ever, the national heroine, the girl every Romanian parent wanted his or her girl to be like, decided that enough was enough and crossed the border to, of all places, Hungary. It was big news.

While Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci was on a tour of the United States in 1981, the two men who had the most impact on her career, her coach, Bela Karolyi, and her choreographer, Geza Pozsar, defected. They said this week that they had considered asking Comaneci, who was 19 at the time, to join them, but decided against it--not because they feared that she would reject them, but because they feared that she would accept.

Gymnastics officials from the United States and Romania conspired to fix scores last fall at the World Gymnastics Championships at Rotterdam, the Netherlands, according to Greg Marsden, the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics coach at the time. Marsden said last week in Salt Lake City that he and the Romanian coach exchanged scores, which were to be delivered to the countries' respective judges. The scores were what each country wanted its athletes to receive.

COLOMBIA * World Cup Record: Played 10, won two, lost six, tied two, goals for 13, goals against 21. * Best Finish: Second round, 1990. * 1994 Showing: Eliminated in the first round. * Coach: Hernan Dario Gomez. He was the assistant coach in 1994 but rose to the top job despite the debacle that year. Has stuck with the same players, which might be a mistake. * Players to Watch: Jorge Bermudez, Freddy Rincon, Anthony de Avila, Carlos Valderrama, Faustino Asprilla.

Crawling through the mud and ice, owning nothing more valuable than the denim jacket on her back, Nadia Comaneci escaped across the Romanian border into Hungary on a winter night in 1989. If she ever returned home, those who knew of her plans to defect warned, soldiers would be waiting for her. As she disembarked from an airplane a week ago in Bucharest, she indeed was met by a military escort. But the soldiers were not there to arrest her.

She was on the balance beam when her coach, Florin Gheorghe, flew into a rage and slapped the tiny gymnast. Then he kicked her. He grabbed her by the neck and pounded her head against the beam, yelling, "This is going to teach you to get over your fear of the beam." Then, eventually, he killed her. Adriana Giurca was 11. The story of Adriana Giurca's death was largely ignored in this country, probably because it happened in Romania.

Don't feel bad for Dimitar Penev just because he has to work on his birthday. Penev, who turns 49 today, has reason enough to celebrate. In the last month he has gone from almost complete obscurity to worldwide fame. In fact, it would be fair to say that when he blows out the candles today, his name will be recognized by more people than that of Zhelyu Zhelev. Penev is Bulgaria's soccer coach. Zhelev is Bulgaria's president. Amazing what a little thing like a World Cup victory can do for a man.

The biographies of players prepared for the media before the World Cup revealed that Sweden's goalkeeper, Thomas Ravelli, likes poetry. That was news to the people who gather the news in Sweden. "I would think he would be the last one on the team who likes poetry," a soccer writer from Stockholm said Sunday. But whether or not Ravelli will read them, there were many poems being written about him after his performance in the quarterfinal game against Romania at Stanford Stadium.

As usual, Romanian midfielder Gheorghe Hagi was his own man on all fronts Sunday in the World Cup quarterfinals. Others may be laughing and he frowns. Even on the field, he sometimes appears to be playing his own game. In defeat, there was a trail of Romanian tears along the sideline at Stanford Stadium and in the middle of the field where the players gathered to watch defender Miodrag Belodedici's final futile penalty kick. And Hagi?

A member of the Romanian Olympic team, seeking political asylum in Canada, defected after the Winter Games, immigration officials said Tuesday. Calgary radio stations reported that the man was the coach of the Romanian bobsled team, but police and immigration officials said they refused to identify the defector because they did not want to jeopardize his safety or his family's safety.

The women's 1,500-meter race, usually as strategic as it is athletic, developed into a kind of drag race Saturday, all horsepower no finesse, when Romania's Paula Ivan ran from the field, stayed from the field and destroyed the field. She finished in an Olympic record of 3 minutes 53.96 seconds, well ahead of Soviets Lailoute Baikauskaite (4:00.24) and Tatiana Samolenko (4:00.30). Mary Slaney of Eugene, Ore.

It is a team that has been described in terms generally reserved for an especially cranky rodeo bull: tempestuous, emotional, unpredictable, dangerous. Romania, a team of self-described hotheads expected to self-destruct, has instead been a marvel of smooth deportment and professional focus--an experimental approach for the Romanians that has borne such sweet fruit, a place in the World Cup quarterfinals.

What sort of magical spell do these Romanians put on the soccer ball, anyway? It is one thing for Gheorghe Hagi to bedevil a goalkeeper with a crazy 35-yard lob into the upper-right corner, such as the one that stunned Colombia's Oscar Cordoba in the first World Cup game at the Rose Bowl. Perhaps even more breathtaking was forward Ilie Dumitrescu's goal in the 11th minute against Argentina on Sunday, a hooking shot off a direct free kick on the left flank from just outside the penalty box.