Silivas completes gold hat-trick

Press, 26 September 1988, Page 21

Silivas completes gold hat-trick

NZPA-Reuter Seoul Daniela Silivas, of Romania, won three Olympic gymnastics gold medals yesterday to dominate the women’s apparatus finals and steal the limelight from her great Soviet rival, Yelena Shushunova. Chirpy, curly-haired Silivas, extrovertly playing to the crowd, won the asymmetric bars, beam and floor titles. She also came third in the vault to end the week-long competition with three golds, two silvers and a bronze. Shushunova, in . unusually error-prone form, picked up only one silver and one bronze to add to her golds in the team and individual all-round

events. The Soviet Union’s rising young star, Svetlana Boginskaya, took the day’s other gold, on the vault. The 15 year old also gained silver in the floor exercises. Being drawn to start first in three of the four disciplines worked out in different ways for Silivas. In the opening horse vault, she was competent but not yet fully into the swing of competition. She lacked the extra sparkle that Boginskaya and the Romanian silver 'medallist, Gabriela Potorac, following her, provided. Shushunova fell to her knees on landing from her second-vault, and finished last among the eight competitors.

Silivas carried a maximum score of 10 from the preliminaries into the asymmetric bars final. Scoring another 10 for her faultless routine, she put the gold medal beyond the reach of her rivals before they had competed. It also equalled the record of seven perfect 10s set by Silivas’ compatriot Nadia Comaneci at the 1976 Montreal Games and ensured for the first time in Seoul that the Romanian national anthem would be played at a gymnastics medals ceremony. Shushunova and East Germany’s Dagmar Kersten, who performed a series of complicated and

original twists, also scored. 10s on the asymmetric bars. Kersten took the silver because of the higher mark she had carried into the final. The balance beam, Romanian gymnasts’ traditional speciality, would have provided a fitting apparatus for Silivas to beat Comaneci’s record tally of 10s. But only four of the seven judges saw her surefooted series of flips and somersaults as perfect, and it was averaged down to 9.987. Only a 10. could have beaten Silivas, however, and none was awarded. Shushunova took the silver and the bronze went to Romania’s Ga-

briela Potorac and Phoebe Mills, 'of the United States. A captivating floor routine, mixing balletic pirouettes with lightningfast tumbling and changes of direction, ensured Silivas her third gold. Boginskaya, with a routine that could have been an audition for a modern dance company, claimed the silver. Diana Doudeva gained Bulgaria’s first medal in the women’s event with the bronze. Shushunova, level with Silivas going into the final, ended the afternoon as badly as she had begun. She stumbled cn her first landing, later almost slid off the mat and finished seventh out of eight.