Andreea Răducan

Who is Andreea Răducan?

Andreea Mădălina Răducan is a retired gymnast from Bârlad, Romania.

Răducan began competing in gymnastics at a young age and was training at the Romanian junior national facility by the age of 12½. As one of the outstanding gymnasts of the Romanian team in the late 1990s, Răducan was known both for her difficult repertoire of skills and her dance and presentation. Over her four-year senior career, she won Olympic or World Championships medals on every event except the uneven bars and earned three individual World Championships titles, on the floor exercise in 1999 and 2001 and the balance beam in 2001.

Răducan competed at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where she contributed strongly to the Romanian team's gold medal and won an individual silver medal on the vault. She was also the original winner of the all-round title, but was disqualified and stripped of her gold medal shortly after the competition concluded, when it was revealed that she had failed doping controls, testing positive for pseudoephedrine, at the time a banned substance.