She was a teenager, barely old enough to compete at the Olympics, and she did it almost flawlessly. After her last performance, to music from “Riverdance,” she pumped her fist and ran to her coach, who hoisted her onto his shoulders to wave to the crowd. There was no need to wait for her score to know she had won.
Then, abruptly, the dream was gone: She was stripped of her gold medal after she tested positive for a drug she didn’t know she had taken.
The athlete, Andreea Raducan — 16 years old when she and two other Romanian gymnasts swept the women’s all-around podium at the 2000 Olympics — became a cautionary tale for young prodigies who conquered their sport by doing everything the adults around them told them to.