MELITA RUHN

Nick name:
Date of birth: April 19, 1965
Gender Female
Height   Weight
Marital status
Children
Place of birth:
Hometown:.../Germany
Profession Coach
Languages
Start discipline:
First int. event
Nat. team since
Club:
Head coach:
Assistant coach
Choreographer
Best apparatus/cat.
Favourite tricks: beam            Personal tricks
highest score
Music #1                      Author #1

General Interest
Melita started gymnastics at Sport School Club Sibiu with coach Kristl Voiciulescu and Nicolae Buzoianu.
She was a strong gymnast, good on all events and a hard worker.

Melita retired from competitive gymnastics in 1982, when she was 17. She finished high school in her native Sibiu and left for Bucharest in 1984. She went to the sports university there, while also competing for her home club of CSS Sibiu for a short period.

After she graduated college, she already had a boyfriend, Roland Fleischer, who immigrated to Germany with his family in 1988. They wanted to get married but the [Romanian Communist government] only gave them their approval 2 years later, so she only managed to leave Romania in 1990. “I got to Germany, in a refugee camp near Nürnberg and stayed there for three moths. Six of us stayed in the same room, and Roland would come from the city to see me. Then we were allowed to move in together, but we didn’t have any furniture or dishes. Our first daughter, Stefi was born that year, and then it was a different struggle,” recalls Melita. Their hardships didn’t stop there. They needed money, so the former gymnast started working as a custodian.

Their second daughter, Francisca, was born in 1992. A year later, the Fleischers moved to Munich, where they still reside. Melita works in a school, where she owns a small store and teaches PE. Her husband is the school administrator. “Some of our friends from Sibiu are just one hour drive's away, so we visit them all day long,” said a smiling Melita. Life in Germany is anything but easy for the former gymnast, as she explains. “We wanted to own our own house, so in 1998, we borrowed 500,000 German marks from a bank, and now we keep thinking we’ll be old before we pay off our loan,” she said, adding that “we might come back to Romania when we retire.”

After 11 years in which she’s been through all the ups and downs the sport has to offer, Melita says that her gymnastic days are only a memory. “I think about it sometimes, but they’re just memories. I don’t want my daughters to do gymnastics, because I know what sacrifices I made, so I took them to swimming, skiing or basketball.” She gets more emotional as she moves on to her next point. “Still, whenever I remember those unique moments, from the 79 Worlds when Romania won its first team world title, I get goose bumps. Beating the Soviet Union was a miracle.” Other memories are completely opposite. “I broke all the fingers on my hands, My legs, about 10 times from my knees and below. The worst fracture occurred before the Moscow Olympics, on my ankle. They put my ankle in a cast, and coach Karoly took it off before my vault. I scored a 10. It was incredible. Then, I put the cast back on my ankle,” she revealed. (Gazeta Sporturilor)

1979 Europeans, Copenhagen, Denmark: 5th AA
1979 World Championships, Fort Worth, TX, USA: 1st Team, 3rd AA, 3rd FX, 7th VT, 8th
1980 Olympics, Moscow, Russia: 2nd Team, 3rd VT, 3rd UB

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