Marian Dragulescu preparing to seize unique Olympic moment
For the record, Marian Dragulescu (ROU) never thought he would be here either. What would he have said, in years past, to someone who told him that in 2020 he would be heading towards his fifth Olympic Games? Simple. “You are crazy, no way,” he says.
Yet at 39, that is where he is. With four World titles on Floor Exercise, four on Vault and a trio of Olympic medals, Dragulescu has already solidified his place in the league of Gymnastics greats along with other Romanian starso like Nadia Comaneci, Daniela Silivas, Sandra Izbasa, and Catalina Ponor.
Longevity alone gets him there, but so would what he is capable of. Twenty years after he introduced it at the 1999 Arthur Gander Memorial in Switzerland, the Dragulescu vault – a handspring double front with a half twist out – remains one of the gold standards in Men’s Artistic Gymnastics, and the man who gave the vault its name is still capable of sticking them.
It was one of those stuck landings, effectuated in Vault finals at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart (GER) that opened the door for Dragulescu to compete at the Tokyo Olympics. When the Games open in July 2021, Dragulescu will be 40, making him the oldest male gymnast to compete at the Olympics since Masao Takemoto (JPN) at the 1960 Games in Rome.
Read the full feature from gymnastics.sport here.
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from a gymnastics.sport article.
