Roxana Daniela Popa Nedelcu is a Romanian-born Spanishartistic gymnast who has represented Spain in all her international competitions. Popa first came into contact with gymnastics in her native Romania, where there is a long tradition in the sport, and there she had her early training. Now, she trains at the Spanish National Training Center, and is a part of the EGAD Los Cantos Alcorcon in Madrid. Her best events are vault and floor exercise. Besides her native language, Romanian, Roxana is also fluent in Spanish, English, and speaks a little French. Popa's idols are Romanian gymnasts Nadia Comăneci, Cătălina Ponor, and Larisa Iordache.
Early career
Popa moved from Romania to Spain with her family when she was six years old. She competed at the Spanish Nationals in 2008, and despite winning everything, she did not make the podium as she did not yet have her Spanish citizenship. This was featured on a documentary of Canal Plus España. When she was finally cleared to compete for Spain, she sustained an elbow injury training on uneven bars, which required surgery and intensive rehab, leaving her out of competition for a few years.
Junior career
Popa represented Spain at the 2012 European Championships in Brussels. She qualified to the all-around and vault final, and was a third reserve for the floor final. She ended up placing sixth in the vault final and eleventh in the all-around.
Senior career
Popa's senior debut came in 2013, at the Cottbus World Cup, where she did not make any event finals. Later that month, she was named to the Spanish team for the European Championships. At the European Championships, she qualified fifth into the all-around and seventh to the floor exercise final. She placed sixth in the all-around final and seventh on floor exercise. In June, she competed in the Mediterranean Games. However, she had a bad landing in the warm-up prior to the all-around and sat out the rest of the competition. The injury was not serious, and Popa was well enough to claim the Spanish all-around title the following month. She was named to the Spanish team for the World Championships at the end of summer. In qualifications, Popa qualified tenth to the all-around, but missed out on the event finals. She placed twelfth in the all-around. Popa was announced as a competitor for the Mexico Open in November and the Glasgow World Cup in December. In Mexico, she struggled a little on the first day of competition, placing fourth, but came back strong to win the gold medal, 0.200 points over the silver medalist, USA's Peyton Ernst. In Glasgow, things started out rough, when she bailed on her double-twisting Yurchenko vault for not getting the block she needed, and performed a very simple Yurchenko layout vault. She performed well on her other three events and finished fifth. In early 2014, she was announced as a competitor for the American Cup in Saturday, March 1 and the Tokyo World Cup on April 5–6. At the American Cup, she had good vault and beam rotations, but hit her feet on her Pak salto on bars. On floor exercise, she impressed the crowd with her floor routine and finished in sixth place. Later that month, she competed at a friendly meet against gymnasts from Great Britain and Germany, winning all-around gold and team bronze. In early May, she competed at the Spanish Cup, winning every event except balance beam, on which she finished in fifth place. A few weeks later, she competed at the European Championships, placing sixth with her team, seventh on floor exercise, and eighth on uneven bars. In July, she competed at the Spanish Nationals, defending her title in the all-around and winning gold on every individual event except balance beam, where she won silver. At the world championships she qualified to the all around, doing good performances on her specialties, bars and floor. At the Blume Memorial in November she had upgraded routines on bars and floor, performing very well. She was scheduled to compete at the Mexico Open and was considered the front-runner to win, but suffered a knee injury in training the morning of the competition and withdrew. The injury was diagnosed as a torn ACL and meniscus, and required surgery. Upon diagnosis, her doctors discovered the injury was an old one, and had gone unnoticed until December. She returned to competition in 2015, but reinjured her knee, which prevented her from trying to qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics. She began competing again in 2019, after missing more than three years of competition due to injuries. At the 2019 World Championships, she helped Spain qualify a team to the Olympics for the first time since 2004. Individually, she qualified to the floor final, her first world championship event final. She finished sixth in the final, scoring 13.800. When asked about her comeback, which has been called miraculous, Popa said "I would not have been able to totally retire from gymnastics. I did well psychologically to heal myself. For me, every day is a challenge to face fears, anguish, and the anxiety of my imperfect knee. But I still keep going. I know that there are elements that I cannot do as a precaution in order to keep the knee in place, but if I have to take that risk, I will do it without hesitation."
