Ponor, Catalina

She began gymnastics at the age of four. In 2002, the athlete was noticed by Octavian Belo and Marianna Bitang , inviting them to the national team.

She achieved her first major international success in 2003 at the World Championships in Anaheim. The real triumph of Ponor was the year 2004. She became a three-time Olympic champion in Athens, a three-time European champion, and also won gold in the World Cup finals. In December 2007, Ponor was forced to announce her retirement due to injuries.

In the spring of 2011, Catalina returned to training and to the national team. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London , Romania helped the national team qualify for the team finals, and also qualified in the individual championships in the finals on a log and in floor exercises. In the team finals, she received 15,100 in the vault, 15.416 on the log and 14.8 in the floor exercises and helped her team win bronze Olympic medals. In the final, on a log, judges estimated that she took 3rd place with a score of 15,066. However, according to the satisfied protest, the United States ultimately received only 4th place: a bronze medal in this form was awarded to Alexander Raizman (the complexity factor of the American program was increased from 6.2 to 6.3). Immediately after that, she won a silver Olympic medal in the finals in floor exercises with a score of 15.2.

After the 2012 Olympics, she did not take part in the competition, but in the spring of 2015, together with another Romanian national star who finished her career, Sandra Izbasha , she announced her intention to return to the national team before the 2016 Olympic Games . At the European Championships 2016, the Romanian wins two bronze medals. Representatives of Romania have only one quota for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, and on July 6 it was announced that this quota goes to Catalina Ponor. In addition, Ponor was chosen as the standard bearer at the opening ceremony. At the Games she was able to get to the finals in a log exercise, but she performed unsuccessfully in the finals and became only the 7th. Ponor became the first Romanian gymnast to perform at three Olympics. After Rio announced plans to perform at the home European Championships 2017, as well as at the next Olympics in Tokyo, in 2020.

At the home European Championships 2017 in Cluj-Napoca, she won a gold medal in a log exercise, setting a record for the number of gold medals of continental championships on this apparatus (five wins).

On October 5, 2017, after qualifying for the World Cup, she announced her retirement.

• Catalina Ponor at Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique