Author: Gymnastics History

While gymnasts from North Korea and China have been penalized for age falsification, Romania never was. The logic was paradoxical: a consistent lie looked like the truth on paper.

“How should I put it… an uncaught thief is…”

Nicolae Vieru trailed off. It was early April of 2002, and the president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation had just been confronted with a troubling contradiction: Gina Gogean’s birth certificate said 1978; her international competition records said 1977. Vieru, agitated, insisted he had never seen such a thing. When the ProSport journalist pressed—wasn’t this irregular?—Vieru laughed. “What sanctions could they take? I’m a vice president of the FIG, responsible for regulations and the statutes. There’s nothing in the rules about this.”

Weeks later, speaking on TVRM television, Vieru told a different story: “Altering ages was a worldwide practice. Just as others copied us, we copied others.”

Between those two statements, the evidence had piled up too rapidly to contain. Journalists located birth certificates in village archives. Former gymnasts confirmed that the documents submitted in their names did not match their actual birthdates. The denial collapsed within a month.

But what did that collapse mean? If passports submitted to international competitions had been accepted years earlier, did a confession in the press matter now? If the documents had been internally consistent when the FIG reviewed them, was there any mechanism to revisit what had already been approved?

Daniela Silivaș’s age falsification is the case every gymnastics fan can name, but few know that it took more than a decade for her real age to appear. It’s a story built on a false confirmation, an overlooked sidebar, and the quiet mystery of why no one bothered to look sooner.

In 1990, after years of rumors about age falsification, the world thought it had finally learned Daniela Silivaș’s real birth year: 1971. But that certainty turned out to be misplaced. The question of her actual age would remain unsettled for another twelve years. Only in 2002, when ProSport began collecting documents and retracing old accounts, did Romanian reporters finally dial Silivaș’s number to ask.

By then, the pattern had already revealed itself twice over. First came Gina Gogean, whose birth certificate told a story that contradicted a decade of official records—a contradiction she declined to acknowledge. Then Alexandra Marinescu, who did what Gogean would not: she confirmed that her passport had been altered and pointed to her damaged body as proof of what that alteration had cost.

And then came Silivaș. ProSport’s headline put it bluntly: “The Nightmare Continues: Silivaș’s Age Was Falsified, Too!”

Three gymnasts. Three falsified ages. And for Silivaș—the most decorated of them all, with six Olympic medals from a single Games—the truth was finally being spoken in her own voice.

Here is the story that took more than a decade to come into focus.

The federation manipulated Alexandra Marinescu’s age on paper; the training regimen carved lasting injuries into her spine. Together, they shaped a career that ended far too soon.

The week after revealing Gina Gogean’s age falsification, ProSport published a second case. But where Gogean’s career had been “fulfilled” and “decorated with medals,” Alexandra Marinescu’s story ended in spinal surgeries and permanent pain. Between April 15 and April 17, 2002, the newspaper documented how the Romanian Gymnastics Federation falsified Marinescu’s birth date, who made the decision, and what it cost her. What follows is a synthesis of that three-day investigation.

But first, Romanian gymnastics goes to war…

Gina Gogean’s birth certificate said 1978. The passport said 1977. And no one could explain where the truth went.

In April 2002, Romanian sports fans woke each morning wondering what ProSport would publish next. For the first set of articles, the sports daily had sent reporters to a small commune in the Eastern Carpathians, to village clinics and town halls, searching for birth certificates. What they found—tucked into green folders bound with string, recorded in yellowing registries—contradicted a decade of official documents for Gina Gogean.

The newspaper published its findings as the story developed, revelation by revelation. What follows is a distillation of the newspaper’s day-by-day reporting, the details of which did not circulate widely outside Romania. Revisiting them now offers a clearer sense of what the episode revealed and what it ultimately obscured.

Note: This is the first installment in a series on Romanian age falsification. Future pieces will examine other gymnasts’ cases, the relevant Romanian laws, and the FIG’s statutes and regulations.