Marian Drăgulescu

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Men's Artistic Gymnastics
Olympic medal record
Silver	2004 Athens	Floor exercise
Bronze	2004 Athens	Team competition
Bronze	2004 Athens	Vault

Marian Drăgulescu (born December 18, 1980 in Bucharest) is a Romanian gymnast. He won four gold medals at the 2004 European championships, making him one of the favourites for medals at the 2004 Summer Olympics. A power athlete, he has long specialised in vault and floor.

Drăgulescu helped his team to a bronze medal and was a forerunner in the all around event until a mistake on the high bar, after which he still thrilled the crowd with a difficult routine. He won silver in the men's floor only after a tiebreaker was needed with gold medalist Kyle Shewfelt. On the men's vault he performed the exceptionally difficult vault that bears his name (a handspring double front with half turn) and received a 9.9, the highest score awarded in World or Olympic competition since 1995. It seemed he needed only to land his second vault to take gold, but he fell. However Dragalescu was still awarded the bronze, a controversial decision because the disparity between the judges scores was greater than is permitted and therefore some or all of them should have been altered. They were not, and Shewfelt was pushed into fourth place. The Canadian federation filed a protest, but the result stood.

Drăgulescu announced his retirement mid 2005, but has since returned and in the world championships in Melbourne in 2005 he won the vault title. He had long been hampered by the lack of a strong second vault, but debuted a new one- a round off half twist entry to forwards two and a half twist. Since then he has dominated that event, retaining his title at the 2006 World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark and also taking the floor title. Dragalescu no longer competes in all six events, which has given him more time to focus on those he does still train. As such, he has gained even more success in his strong events.