Marian Dragulescu has been engaging in public confrontations with the Romanian Gymnastics Federation for a few months now and this week the conflict had another development. If you missed the beginning of this saga, here’s a quick recap for you, courtesy of Corneliu Volosen:
It all started when Marian Dragulescu wrote a public Facebook post complaining that the Romanian Gymnastics Federation and the Ministry of Sport refused to give him his monthly allowance because supposedly he didn’t train the required number of days in November-January. The federation has a rule that you have to be in the gym a certain number of hours monthly in order to receive the stipend. Ioan Suciu the coach during this period, submitted the time log to the federation and according to that time sheet Dragulescu did not meet the criteria to receive the training stipend, nor did he meet the criteria to receive the stipend for injury recovery because he didn’t have any formal arrangements for injury rehabilitation. During the two months that Dragulescu was supposedly injured and couldn’t train, he participated in a reality show filmed abroad which included some physical challenged.
Andreea Raducan, the current president of the federation, published her own Facebook post as a response. According to Raducan, the federation and Dragulescu spoke about this privately a few times. She thought it was not appropriate to go public and criticize the federation and the Ministry of Sport knowing that he did not meet the criteria to receive either stipend. She stated that these are the rules and she couldn’t make exceptions for him – it would be unfair to other athletes and it would be wrong to spend public money on athletes who are not currently training. Raducan also criticized Dragulescu for pursuing TV shows and other opportunities instead of training. She thought his priorities are not to win medals.
In the next episode of this saga, Marian Dragulescu claimed that Andreea Raducan had no legal right to get elected as the federation president since she was on maternity leave during the election. He has reached out to a law office which was to review Raducans eligibility to run for and hold the president position of the Romanian Gym Federation. According to Dragulescu, since Raducan was on maternity leave in August 2017, per article 50 of the Employment code, she was not eligible to run for or hold this executive position. Raducan responded with arming herself with her own lawyers and claimed that there was no legal violation.
The drama abruptly ended for a short period of time with Mariana Bitang intervening in order to make peace between Dragulescu and Raducan. The two hugged publicly and announced that their feud has ended. All was well for about a month until the next episode of the Romanian gymnastics drama.
Romania has a stipend for Olympic medalists but only retired athletes can receive it. Apparently, Dragulescu was getting this stipend for the past few months and thus was considered a retired athlete until the official notification of hir return to the sport. Last week, Dragulescu went to the press again claiming that the federation refused to register him for the World Challenge Cup in Osijek, Croatia and he planned to stage a protest in front of the government. Dragulescu also said that if Romania doesn’t want him anymore, he would compete under the neutral Olympics flag (as if IOC just grants this right easily). The Romanian gymnastics federation then gave a statement, saying that Dragulescu couldn’t be entered because he registered as an active athlete only in late April, after the registration deadline for the event has passed. Dragulesu said to the media that as famous athlete he would not have to pay a fee to compete at Osijek but it’s not quite true. The federation then received a permission from FIG to enter Dragulescu and paid a fine for being late. The federation also stated that the competition in Osijek wasn’t in their competition plan for the year and thus the expenses were not covered by their sponsor, meaning that the expenses (about 3500 euros, including having to send a coach and a judge) would have to come from the federation’s revenues.
While Dragulescu was able to achieve what he wanted this time, it doesn’t seem like his conflict with the federation is coming to an end, so stay tuned for more news.
Photo: Telekom Sport
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