| 01. Rodica Dunca, former Romanian National Team Member (1978 - 1982), gymnastics. Article published in ‘Prosport’, October 26, 2002. Interviewer’s (Decebal Radulescu) questions in bold. Former gymnast Rodica Dunca, 38 years old, world champion with the team in Fort Worth 1979, speaks out about her time in Deva. Rodica, one says that Bela Karoly had hard training methods. I think you can say that hard isn’t the word in conditions where you were satisfied if you got away with a beating. This because on certain days we were hit until blood was pouring out of our nose. The hunger was our eternal enemy. But what scared you the most of Karoly? Is there a certain episode? It was at the end of a tiring training day, of 9 hours of preparation. We got to the physical exercises. This consisted of climbing a rope in pike position. We went up and down twice, but Bela yelled at us to do it again. Melita Ruhn only managed to climb up. At a certain moment, she couldn’t hold on and she fell down. How did the trainer react? He didn’t say anything then. Melita lay down unconscious; the ambulance came and took her to hospital. She stayed in hospital for about 2 weeks. When she came back, Karoly gathered us all in the gym and said to her <swearing>. We stood there astounded. With all of this you resisted in Karoly’s regime. No. You can say that it was a concentration camp. Or even a prison. We were forced to resist there because we escaped a couple of times from the training camp. How? In ’80 or ’81. Karoly hadn’t fled to America yet. We were exhausted; we didn’t know what to do. One evening, Melita, Teodora and me decided to escape. We climbed through the window, went to the train station and took the train to Baia Mare. At Dej, however, the Security Police caught us and brought us back. Nadia didn't want to flee with you? We didn’t ask her, but the coincidence was that towards the morning she wanted to do the same thing. She couldn’t get out and hid in a toilet that wasn’t used anymore in the gym. She stayed there for 3 days. The trainers asked us if we know anything about her. What were the consequences? Karoly nailed the windows shut, and the Security Police threatened us that if we would escape again, our parents would suffer. Were there other motives that forced you to do these things? The hunger always put us in extreme situations. And probably the methods that they used to keep us away from food, drove us to despair. What were these methods? I remember that in ’79, before Worlds in Fort Worth, Nadia was a couple of kilos too heave. We were in Germany in a training camp. Geza Poszar, the choreographer, and Bela Karoly, slept in our room. In front of the door was the toilet. When we needed to use it, we had to pee with the door open. Why? They were scared that we would drink water. But we went into the toilet, we did what we had to do but we didn’t flush the water. We climbed up the on the lid and with a glass that we hid there, we took water from the cistern. We drunk that until we were saturated. But that could make you ill. That didn’t count. Oh well, when we took a shower the same thing happened. We were guarded and we didn’t have permission to raise our forehead so we couldn’t swallow water. What did you eat before the competitions? In the morning a slice of salami, two nuts and a glass of milk. In the evening the same menu but without the nuts. Was there one time that you ate enough? Just twice when I was a gymnast. That’s all? Aaaah, it happened once more. When we had a demonstration in Spain. I left the hotel and I didn’t know why the trainers weren’t in our neighbourhood. A couple of metres from the building was a plantation with strawberries. We savaged them down like termites and we indulged them until we had enough. They heard afterwards because the owner created a scandal at the hotel. Did you ever have health problems? A lot of times. Broken legs, shoulder and other things. I remember that when our period started, the nurse took us into the doctor’s room and gave us an injection. It could be that there were hormones in it because I didn’t have a menstrual cycle for almost two years after that. The same with the other girls. Did you take pills? We didn’t take them, they shoved them down our throat. The nurse stood next to everyone and made sure that we swallowed them. In the morning 14 pills, at lunch 20 and 4 powders and 10 in the evening. I never knew what kind of pills they were but when I retired from gymnastics, I had problems. What kind of problems? I became dependant and I needed to buy them another year after this. The pharmacist was dumbfounded when he saw what I swallowed. But did you find out afterwards what kind of medicine it was? Yes, but I don’t remember what they were called. It’s not important anymore now. |