Oana Petrovschi shone in the “big” gymnastics for only a year, after that the dream to participate to the Athens Olympics faded away. Now she has a titanium prosthetic of her spine.
10 years of gymnastics. Oana Petrovschi (22 years old) began her journey to the Olympics when she was only 7 years old. “I was just like a small ball, ready to explode”, she remembers.
She left Birlad for Deva. Work, exhausting trainings, pain, internship and training camps, away from family, away from friends. Nothing out of usual. Hundreds of little girls started like her, dreaming that one day they will be like Nadia.
ATHENS, THE GREAT SORROW
In 2002 Oana made her forceful entry into the world of the senior gymnastics. She won 23 medals in only one year. She climbed on the second step of the podium at the World Championship at Debrecen, parallels. “I was part of the team preparing for the 2004 Olympics of Athens, I had the most difficult finishing in the world at parallels! I should have been on the Athens Podium! All my life I will feel that I have failed my career because I have not been there” she says when she looks at the photos taken with her ex-colleagues. She is not complaining though. She had already learned to live with this pain, for which there are no medicines or surgeries. Everything ended in 2003. The health problems killed her dream.
4 YEARS OF TORMENT
At the end of 2002, Oana participated to seven official competitions and one demo in three months. That was too much. Her back broke in March 2003. The doctors recommended a three weeks break. But the national team trainers, Octavian Bellu and Mariana Bitang took her to Paris Bercy Grand Prix. There she had an ankle injury also.
‘On the ground I landed on some clothes, at the end of a diagonal. I do not know why they were there’.
After another competition, in
