Oana Ban
| Oana Ban | ||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Oana Mihaela Ban | |||||||||||||||
| Country represented |
 Romania
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| Born |
January 11, 1986 Cluj-Napoca, Romania |
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| Discipline | Women's artistic gymnastics | |||||||||||||||
| Level | Senior International | |||||||||||||||
| Gym | Deva National Training Center | |||||||||||||||
| Head coach(es) | Octavian Belu | |||||||||||||||
| Assistant coach(es) | Mariana Bitang | |||||||||||||||
| Retired | 2004 | |||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Oana Mihaela Ban (born January 11, 1986, in Cluj-Napoca) is a retired Romanian artistic gymnast. She is an Olympic gold medalist with the team and a world silver medalist on beam and with the team. Her best events were the floor and the balance beam.
Oana Ban started to train for gymnastics in her hometown at "Viitorul" Gymnastics Club with coaches Rodica Câmpean and Anton Ciupe. Ban quickly rose to prominence as one of Romania's top junior world-class gymnasts. She competed in her first Romanian national championships in 1998, winning the floor exercise event in the junior division. The following year, she was invited to join the Romanian national team, and began working with coaches Octavian Belu and Mariana Bitang at the elite training facility in Deva. Success in major international junior meets soon followed, including a first-place finish at the Top Gym tournament in Belgium in 1999 and a bronze medal at the 2001 European Youth Olympic Days.
With her early January birth date, Ban missed the eligibility cutoff for the 2001 World Championships by 11 days. She was forced to wait until 2002 to make her international senior debut. At the 2002 World Championships in Debrecen, Ban won a silver medal on the balance beam, one of Romania's only victories of the competition, and placed fourth on the floor finals. Later that year she placed second all around at the Chunichi Cup (behind teammate Oana Petrovschi) and won the Massilia Cup. In 2003, Ban had a similarly strong showing, contributing to the Romanian team's silver medal at the 2003 World Championships and placing sixth in the all-around final. That year she successfully competed in several international competitions, winning the all around silver medal at the Gander Memorial behind Cătălina Ponor and the all around bronze medal at the 2003 Chunichi cup behind Andreea Munteanu and Svetlana Khorkina. She also won silver on beam at the 2003 Cottbus Cup and the 2003 DTB Cup and won the Swiss cup together with Marian Drăgulescu.
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