Bucharest, Tuesday

A ROMANIAN gymnastics coach was jailed for eight years today for

beating to death an 11-year-old girl during a training session.

A Bucharest court found Florin Gheorghe, 25, a former trainer at the

capital's elite Dinamo sports school, guilty of manslaughter after the

November 1993 killing of gymnast Adriana Giurca.

Under Romanian law the charges carry a maximum jail sentence of 10

years.

Gheorghe, who has been in detention since February 1994, was not

present in court, and neither were Giurca's parents, who issued the

lawsuit over their daughter's killing.

After learning from lawyers of Gheorghe's sentence, the girl's mother,

Maria, said the court had been too lenient.

''That trainer hit my daughter like a beast and her death was more

than manslaughter. It was murder and he should have been punished for

that,'' she said.

The court also set ''moral damages'' at 10 million lei (#3733), which

Gheorghe will have to pay to the Giurca family.

''The money is nothing for me and my husband. No money can bring our

daughter back to life,'' Maria Giurca said.

The Giurcas said they would sue the Dinamo school, which they accused

of ''irresponsibility'' in employing what they called ''a criminal

trainer''.

The court heard testimony that Gheorghe had flown into a rage during a

training session on the balance beam, throwing the tiny girl to the

ground and beating her. Adriana died in hospital several hours later.

''If sports performances are built on physical and moral ordeal, all

the gold medals that Romania won throughout the years mean nothing,''

Adriana's father said.

Romanian sports officials have rejected accusations that beatings were

used in training to turn Romanian gymnasts into top performers.

Commenting on Adriana's death, Romanian Gymnastics Federation

president Adrian Stoica called it an ''unfortunate event''.

''Such behaviour is unusual in our gymnastics schools,'' he said.

He added: ''It was an accident.''

However, the girl's team-mates told the court corporal punishment was

''normal'' in their school whenever they failed to perform to their

trainers' exacting standards.

''We accepted the beatings and the pain because we were convinced that

this would open the door to top performance for us,'' a young girl

gymnast told a court hearing last week.

Octavian Bellu, chief trainer at Romania's Olympic gymnastics centre

in the Transylvanian city of Deva, said that despite changes in Romania

since the 1989 fall of communism, what he called ''an iron discipline''

was still the best way to attain top performances. -- Reuter.