New Faces: Roxana Popa (ESP)

Roxana Popa is a Romanian born first year senior who made her debut competing for Spain at the European Championships and the World Championships this year. She showed promise as a Junior and competed well at the 2012 Junior European Championships, where she qualified to the vault and all-around final (11th place).

Romanian-born Popa competes for Spain (credit: FIG)

Roxana was one of the standout rookie gymnasts at the 2013 World Championships held last month in Antwerp, Belgium. She was particularly impressive on bars where she has a strong swing and and floor where she shows much class and charisma for a young gymnast. She finished in 12th position with 53.366 behind Italy's Carlota Ferlito and Canada's Victoria Moors. Not bad at all for a first year senior!

Here she is on bars at Worlds

Here is her qualification floor routine from Worlds

Roxana is a very strong gymnast, which is clear from her bar work and her powerful vaulting and tumbling. She is also a strong all-arounder and is a great hope for Spain (who qualified strong teams to the Olympic finals in 2000 and 2004). It is lovely to see another Spanish gymnast achieving good results on the World stage. We hope to see you at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Roxana, keep up the great work!

Also see her responses to The Couch Gymnast's 15 Questions here

Article by Imogen Browne (Follow me on Twitter @IFlip4GymBlog)