Embodiment of Olympic spirit

BUCHAREST, Romania – She lost her gold medal, and her innocence, four years ago in Sydney.

So as the Athens Olympics approaches, Andreea Raducan, 20, might be tempted to sink into depression and bitterness. Instead, she’s exulting in her new “normal” life after being dethroned as the queen of world gymnastics.

“I’ve lived those twin moments of being on the podium, and then that disillusionment,” Raducan, now a college sophomore, said. “Athens will bring back memories – some good, some painful. But it’s part of my life. I’ve moved on.”

Raducan was 16 when she delighted the crowds and judges at the 2000 Sydney Games, leading Romania to team gold and winning herself the coveted all-around gold, plus a silver in the vault.

Within 48 hours, it all came crashing down.

Raducan tested positive for pseudoephedrine, a banned stimulant in the over-the-counter cold remedy she had gotten from the team doctor. Despite pleas, protests and global cries of injustice, the International Olympic Committee took the all-around gold away.

Raducan returned to Romania to huge crowds, a heroine’s welcome and a replica solid-gold medal courtesy of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation.

The next year, she won three gold medals at the World Championships – proving, she said with a defiant flip of her long dark-brown hair, “that Sydney was not just a fluke.”

She appealed to the IOC to have her victory reinstated, but was rebuffed. Ironically, the World Anti-Doping Agency removed pseudoephedrine from its list of banned substances last fall.

“I’m waiting for them to give me my medal back,” said Raducan, dressed stylishly in a black leotard, tight black jeans, a silver-studded belt and stiletto heels.

That’s unlikely; to do so would open the IOC to numerous such claims from athletes punished under old rules.

It was, to be sure, a jagged little pill. But Raducan isn’t bitter.

She says she never has been – not even on that dark day in Sydney.

“I didn’t want to pose as a victim,” she said. “I knew I did nothing wrong, and so did everyone else. I lost an Olympic medal, but I gained a lot of fans.”

Raducan retired last year. These days, she’s studying at a Romanian sports university, representing a Bucharest tourism agency, and toying with the idea of becoming an international gymnastics judge one day.

Her many admirers include Romanian head coach Octavian Belu.

“Andreea’s celebrity was a thousand times greater than it would have been if she had just been another Olympic all-around gold medalist,” he said. “She was a child of the world for far longer than two weeks.”

Raducan is looking forward to Athens, where she’ll work as a commentator for Romanian television.

Most of all, though, she’s enjoying her boyfriend and the simple pleasures she had to forgo during years of intensive training.

“I go to see a movie. We go to a disco,” she said. “I’m just a normal student living a normal life.”