Olympic silver medalist Celestina Popa-Toma may have been a product of the Eastern European sports factories that churned out hundreds of medal-winners during the Cold War, but she offers a much different experien---ce at her own gymnastics facility in Maple Ridge.

Celestina Popa Gymnastics opened its doors last week and offers classes for artistic gymnasts two-and-a-half years and older, as well as adult and family drop-in classes.

After moving to Canada in 1994 from Romania, Popa-Toma began coaching at Flicka gymnastics in North Vancouver. She says she decided to open a gym locally to closer to her family, which is based in Maple Ridge.

“It’s nice to only have a two minute drive to work instead of two hours,” she says.

The emphasis is on fun and developing a healthy active lifestyle, she says, and while there is currently no elite program at the gym, she hopes to develop one in time.

“We want the children to grow in our garden,” she says.

It’s a decidedly different approach to gymnastics than at the sport school she grew up in. For five years Popa-Toma lived apart from her family in preparation for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. She was just 18 years old when she competed there, winning a silver medal in the team competition.

“It was like a little army,” she says of the Romanian gymnastics program at the time. “It was their way or the highway.”

From the time she was 13, every aspect of her life was strictly controlled by the program, from nutrition to sleeping patterns.

While that approach to athlete development produced champions, Popa-Toma said it was difficult to be separated from her family, especially during her teenage years.

Things are much different today in Canada, where athlete development is less structured and largely left up to the athlete and their family.

“It’s fun when you get medals and you get crazy skills, but it takes a lot of hard work, and it’s up to the whole family to make that commitment,” says Popa-Toma. “You have to train the parents as much as the kids if they want to be successful.”