Among the brightest stars of Romanian gymnastics in the early 1980s, Lavinia Agache carved out a remarkable career despite controversies and heartbreak. Born February 11, 1968, in Onești—the same hospital that welcomed Nadia Comăneci into the world—Agache emerged as one of the era’s most decorated gymnasts, accumulating ten medals at major international competitions. Yet her path to prominence was shadowed from the start: Romanian officials altered her age, listing her birth year as 1966 instead of 1968. This deception allowed the thirteen-year-old Agache to compete illegally at the 1981 World Championships in Moscow, where she placed seventh all-around—two years before she would have been eligible under FIG’s minimum age of fifteen.
By 1983, Agache had established herself as a force in the sport, winning four medals at the European Championships in Gothenburg (including gold on balance beam and silver in the all-around) and three more at the World Championships in Budapest. She entered the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics as a legitimate contender for all-around gold, having finished third at the 1982 World Cup and consistently challenging teammate Ecaterina Szabó throughout their years training together at the Romanian national center in Deva.
First after compulsories, Agache’s Olympic dream disintegrated when a team doctor gave her a pill to combat jetlag. The next day, disoriented and lethargic, she fell four times during the optional round. The medication was legal, but its effects were devastating: Agache failed to qualify for the all-around final, watching from the sidelines as Szabó battled Mary Lou Retton for gold. What happened to Agache in Los Angeles—and the painful parallel she would later draw to Andreea Răducan’s 2000 Olympic ordeal, when a team doctor’s prescription cost the Romanian gymnast her all-around gold medal—forms a cautionary tale about the precarious intersection of medicine and athletic performance in elite gymnastics.
Here’s International Gymnast‘s piece on Agache from 2001, published before the age falsification scandal erupted in Romania in 2002.
Time on her Side
Former Romanian star Lavinia Agache values past, present, future
1984 Romanian Olympian Lavinia Agache says she painfully relates to compatriot Andreea Răducan, who was stripped of her 2000 Olympic all-around title after testing positive for a banned substance that was accidentally administered by a team doctor.
“I know the doctor didn’t mean to hurt Andreea, but that black spot on her heart will hurt for the rest of her life,” says Agache. “People will ask her, ‘How did it feel to have the medal taken away?,’ and not remember that she was the winner.”
Agache, now coaching at Everglades Gymnastics in Davie, Fla., faced similar despair at the ’84 Games, which she entered as a strong candidate for the all-around gold.
In ’82, Agache finished third all-around at the World Cup. In ’83, she finished second all-around at the European championships, and won three individual medals at the world championships, where she was the only gymnast to qualify for all four event finals.
Although her true age was disputed throughout her career, Agache confirms she was born Feb. 11, 1968, in Onești (“in the same hospital as Nadia,” she quips).
At the ’84 Olympics in Los Angeles, Agache placed first in the compulsories. A team doctor then gave her a pill to combat the jetlag she felt. “The next day, I couldn’t get it together,” Agache recalls of her lethargy and disorientation during the optional round. “I never had a worse competition. I fell four times. It wasn’t nerves, because I was experienced; I had been in two world championships, two European championships and the World Cup. I thought, ‘10 years of hard work and this is how I feel?’”
As a result of her errors during optionals, Agache did not qualify for the all-around final; only three gymnasts per country were permitted, and teammates Ecaterina Szabó, Simona Păucă and Laura Cutina earned those spots. Agache did, however, share gold with her victorious teammates and took a bronze on vault. “Thank God I got at least a gold and a bronze,” Agache says now, but they meant almost nothing to the Romanian federation, which was expecting four golds.
Although the medication Agache received was legal, her depression and shock in ’84 resonated during the Răducan controversy she watched unfold 16 years later. “I was thinking, ‘Where was the doctor’s brain? Didn’t he check the list of banned substances?’” she says.
Still, in spite of what she terms her “mixed feelings,” Agache says she believes the International Olympic Committee’s decision to strip Răducan of her medal was fair. “I think the IOC did the right thing, though,” Agache says. “There are rules, and all athletes should be treated the same way if they are found to be using a medication that is on the banned list.”
The comparisons between Răducan and Agache extend beyond Olympic tribulation. Like Răducan, Agache performed flair-abundant gymnastics with a cheerful disposition. A gymnast with her own style, Agache was often compared to and pitted against teammate Szabó, who would go on to finish second all-around and take three individual golds at the ’84 Olympics. For six years, Agache shared a room at the Romanian national training center in Deva with Szabó and ’88 Olympic star-to-be Daniela Silivaș.
“Sometimes [Szabó] was more consistent, while I was more hyper and agitated,” Agache recalls of the spirited rivalry. “But I was never in her shadow. I always felt I was as good as Ecaterina. If I did well, I won over her; if she did well, she won over me. It was good for both of us.”
Although she has been living in the U.S. since 1990, Agache still appreciates her heroine status in Romania. She last visited Deva in ’98 (“every time I step into the camp, the feeling never changes”), and says she feels honored to be a permanent icon in her homeland. “Especially since Romania is a small country, the people cannot forget those who are honored by the entire world at the Olympics,” says Agache modestly. “You become a hero in their eyes, and stay a hero as long as you live.”
In spite of her ardent patriotism, Agache enjoys life in America. She said most of her ’84 Olympics teammates have also left Romania: Szabó is in France, Cutina is in Italy, and Păucă is in Israel, according to Agache. Cristina Grigoraș lives in Greece but may be in Romania again, she says, and Mihaela Stănuleț still teaches in the Romanian town of Sibiu. This year, Agache plans to reunite with her original coach, Maria Cosma, who now works in Germany. “She was a second mother to me, and made me a star,” says Agache of Cosma, who trained and doted on her from age six to 12.
The gradual relocation of her family to the U.S. has made Agache (who became an American citizen last June) feel more at home. Her mother, Maria, recently joined Agache and her husband, Tom Carney, in their Boca Raton home. Her 27-year-old sister, Monica, a former gymnast who in Romania reached the U.S. equivalent of Level 10 status, plans to study dentistry in Florida. Brother Gabriel, 31, tends bar at a country club in Boca Raton. (Agache’s father died in a drowning accident a month before the ’83 worlds.)
Carney, a police officer whom Agache married in ’95, intimately understands his wife’s devotion and optimism. “Lavinia is a wonderful person, and totally dedicated to her sport,” he says. “Someday, good things will come to her.”
Agache has always seemed to invite those good things, even in the aftermath of her occasional disappointments. After the ’84 Olympics, she was determined to crown her career at the World University Games in Japan a year later. “I wanted to have it all, like any other athlete,” Agache says, citing this meet as the only major event in which she had yet to participate. Then, while warming up on beam—“10 to 20 seconds before the competition”—she broke her kneecap. “Enough was enough,” she says now of the career-ending accident.
Insult added to this injury, Agache says, when Romanian authorities coldly dismissed her accomplishments upon her retirement. “I had to give everything back—my leotards, warm-ups, shoes,” she recalls. “I did everything I could for this country for years, and yet nothing felt like being slapped.”
[Note: Mihaela Stănuleț had the same experience.]
Still recovering from knee surgery, Agache was soon among 2,500 students vying for 100 positions at a sports university. In addition to academic tests, she faced challenges in a 100-meter dash, long jump, shot put, and handball match—all on a still-tender knee. Agache won the 85th spot, enrolled and successfully finished her studies at the university.
In ’90 Agache moved to the U.S., where her coaching gigs eventually landed her in Boca Raton. In ’98, she and Carney moved to Bakersfield, Calif., where Agache had accepted a job at Stars Gymnastics. A year later the couple returned to Boca Raton, and Agache began a year-long stint with the Metro club in Orlando—a 3.5-hour commute she made every four days. Since last August, she has been with the Everglades club, a fairly long but manageable commute southwest of their home.
Although Răducan’s 2000 Olympic woes vicariously revived some past frustrations in Agache, she says she is content with the resilience that continues to motivate her. “I look back now and I thank God for who I am and what I’ve accomplished,” says Agache, commenting favorably on her past, present and future. “I have spent 26 years in gymnastics. Now, as a coach, I have the potential and knowledge to take some gymnasts to a high level. I know how to make it real; I just don’t know when. I always look to the future and stay positive, to make things happen.”
John Crumlish, International Gymnast, March 2001
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