Top 10 Gymnastics Moments from Rio

Romania’s Catalina Ponor competes in the women’s balance beam event final of the Artistic Gymnastics at the Olympic Arena during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on August 15, 2016. / AFP / Toshifumi KITAMURA (Photo credit should read TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images)

1. Romania did not qualify a women’s team

Often, when one speaks of Gymnastics, the Romanian women’s team is part of the conversation. They have been a gymnastics powerhouse for decades, and for the first time in 40 years, the Romanian women’s national team did not qualify for the Olympics.

One of their athletes, Catalina Ponor, came out of retirement to try to bring Romania to Olympic glory. Instead, she only had the chance to compete in individual events, and didn’t medal at all.

She said on Instagram (since reading the NPR article where I first saw this, I have not been able to get to Catalina’s Instagram page. It may have been deleted.):

"Today it was a sad day for us , Romania unfortunately didn’t qualify for Olympics , so sad for me cause actually I come back from retirement just for this …. Well didn’t happened ! I don’t know what it will happened from now on but I wanna say Thank u for everyone for your support and wanna thank u first to all brasilians that they were calling out loud my name !That was the best moment , a feeling that I haven’t feel from long time ago ! I fight for this team till the end I wanted to show that whatever wanna do , u can ! And yes I can still do gymnastics beside my age and not only to do , I still can do at high level ! Anyways thank u again for all your support it was an amazing feeling to compete here in Rio ! Love u al"

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