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$ If there is any safe calculation to be made, it is that the Rumanians and Soviets, back after the 1984 boycott, will dominate the team competition and the individual battles on each piece of apparatus, as well as the sprite fight for top all-around gymnast. At the world championships, Rumania edged out the Soviet Union for the team medal by just 0.45 of a point.
The strength of the East Europeans is hard earned. Their rigorous training practices are legendary. In Rumania, for instance, tots are singled out as young as age four for training at one of the country's elite sports schools. To gain admission, the tumbling tykes not only have to excel at tests that demonstrate speed, flexibility and abdominal strength, but they must also convince coaches that they possess that unquantifiable drive that makes for champions. Once admitted, they find that their academic schedules and lives revolve around training. Americans, by contrast, tend not to commit themselves fully to the elite gymnastics clubs until as late as twelve years old. Even then, they often bounce among coaches, trying to find the most comfortable niche.
Whoever the heart slayer in Seoul is, she need not be the best to be the most beloved. Much as Midori Ito, the gutsy Japanese figure skater, charmed the crowd at the Calgary Winter Games despite her fifth-place finish, gymnasts sometimes emerge from the pack more for their sparkle or originality than the perfection of their routines. Olga Korbut, the first Olympic competitor ever to perform a back flip on the balance beam, dominated the 1972 competition, although she placed only seventh in the all-around. Similarly, bubbly Mary Lou Retton was the toast of Los Angeles when she captured the all-around title, but Rumania's Ecaterina Szabo was actually her better in most of the battles in the individual events.
That said, the applausometer favors Rumania's Aurelia Dobre. Weighing in at 88 lbs. and standing 5 ft. tall, the 15-year-old is a petite powerhouse whose feline brown eyes seduce even as her tight-lipped concentration blocks out the noisy crowds. In Rotterdam she claimed the all-around title with flawless elegance and a Nadia-like composure well beyond her years. "Cool?" asks former U.S. Coach Don Peters. "She had ice in her veins." Dobre's maturity was all the more surprising given the fact that this was her first major international competition at the senior level. Moreover, just one year earlier, she had been laid up in a Bucharest hospital, undergoing reconstructive surgery on her left knee.
That injury threatens to haunt her in Seoul. During the past year, Dobre reinjured her knee, requiring additional surgery. Rumanian officials insist she will compete in Seoul, and Dobre says determinedly, "I know Rumania's team needs me." "Rica," as her teammates call her, can be counted on to spellbind the spectators, but the slightest handicap may cede the scoring advantage to Daniela Silivas, 17, a spunky titan cut from the Olga hey-look- at-me school, whose third-place finish in the all-around at Rotterdam was just 0.45 of a point shy of her teammate's score.