The Golden Girl: Doc on Wrongly Disgraced Romanian Gymnast Poignant and Timely
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-
Sports reputations are a combination of athletic achievement meeting a particular social moment. Or sometimes just missing it. The Golden Girl is an odd sports documentary from HBO Europe that follows Romanian gymnast Andreea Răducan, who won — and then lost — the all-around gold medal at the 2000 Olympics.
After the 16-year-old gymnast tested positive for a substance in a decongestant pill that was administered by her doctor, she was stripped of her medal, though because she was an unwitting minor, not sanctioned. Two years later the substance, pseudoephedrine, was declared legal again.
The Golden Girl follows Răducan’s quest for justice and her campaign to convince the International Olympic Committee to reverse its earlier decision. Many stagey shots involve the glamorous young woman, now a broadcaster and media star, as she meets various officials with repeated rejection.
In the film’s last third, Răducan takes a trip to Oklahoma to meet Nadia Comaneci and her husband, American gymnast Bart Connor, who offer their sympathies. Simona Amănar, Răducan’s Romanian teammate who took the gold medal in Sydney in 2000 by default, is subjected to an uncomfortable interview about why she accepted it.
While all of this is too niche for wide interest, the film touches the troublesome heart of adolescent girls’ gymnastics, which is both a triumph of art and athletics and a sport riddled with a legacy of abuse. That abuse is the secondary but most interesting theme in The Golden Girl.
Throughout the film, we see a long conversation between Răducan and an aggressively negative male psychiatrist who, supposedly, is there to help her deal with the stress of her mission. Instead, he tells Răducan that pursuing justice will unbalance her life and end badly. He insists she’s a victim of abuse even if she doesn’t think of herself that way.
Adding to the case, we have Romanian journalist Christian Tudor Popescu, who talks about how Romania developed its gymnastic achievements by focusing on adolescent gymnasts who were “deformed” by their training regimens, turning them into “robots, who do not protest, just execute.” The point here seems to be that Răducan’s sacrifices were poorly rewarded by her country and her sport.
More interestingly, her misadventures resonate with a parallel recent news story, which is not part of this film. As The Golden Girl was being shot, in 2015 to 2017, the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal was breaking and it had a Romanian tie-in.
In 1981, the coaches who had created the world-conquering Romanian “robot” program, Béla Károlyi and his wife Márta Károlyi, defected to the United States and took over its program, using the same harsh discipline methods they developed in totalitarian Romania. Their first of many successes was coaching Mary Lou Retton to 1984 Olympic gold.
Yet, it was also at their Texas ranch that young athletes, including 2016 Olympic champion Simone Biles, were sexually assaulted by team doctor Larry Nassar, who is currently sentenced to a minimum of 100 years in prison. In 2018, USA Gymnastics ended its connection to the ranch.
The Golden Girl. Directed by Denisa Morariu-Tamas and Adrian Robe. With Andreea Răducan. Available on all major VOD platforms including Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Cable VOD and Vimeo.