updated 12:00 a.m. ET May 29, 2004

DEVA, Romania - In a gym filled with framed photos of Nadia Comaneci, a powerful pixie rockets across the mats. Then she takes flight, corkscrewing through the air with a faint jet trail of chalk dust in her wake.

This is Romania’s gymnastics factory — a medalist machine that was built during the Cold War and still churns out Olympic champions as though they’re coming off an assembly line.

Now Romania Inc., which won team gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, is gearing up to give the Americans, Chinese, Russians and Ukrainians — traditionally its fiercest foes — another rough-and-tumble challenge this summer in Athens.

“We call gymnastics a disease. If a kid becomes seriously infected, she’ll go for the gold,” said Adrian Stoica, secretary-general of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation. “We can’t stop producing champions. We don’t know how to stop.”

Head coach Octavian Belu says he won’t choose his six-member squad for Athens Games until almost the last minute.

Unlike past teams, this one won’t include any experienced Olympians. But the young women are healthy, rested and flush with success after winning last month’s European Championships in Amsterdam. The Romanian men also won team gold at their event in Slovenia and will be medal contenders in Athens.

At Romania’s central training camp in the drab Transylvanian town of Deva, Belu expressed delight at 16-year-old newcomer Daniela Sofronie’s surprise silver in the individual all-around at the Euros.

Sofronie and teammates Catalina Ponor, Monica Rosu, Alexandra Eremia and Silvia Stroescu won team gold for Romania. Ponor, a silver medalist in the balance beam and floor exercise at the 2003 World Championships in Anaheim, Calif., took gold in floor and beam at Amsterdam, and Rosu placed first in the vault.

There’s also Oana Ban and Andreea Munteanu, who turned in strong performances at last year’s worlds.

“I think they can all win a medal, but they must be ready,” said Belu, who has run the program since Bela Karolyi defected to the United States in 1980. “Gymnastics isn’t playing in the park to have fun. It’s working four years for four minutes. It’s flying, leaving the earth and making a triple twist — doing things that are impossible for normal people.”

His protégées aren’t big names — not yet, anyway. But they’re products of a system that taps talent from a nation so obsessed with gymnastics, its daughters get their first exposure to the sport in kindergarten.

“My mother brought me to the local gymnastics hall because, when I was very young, I used to climb the heating pipes in our house,” Sofronie said after a two-hour session in the hangar-sized gym.

Like so many Romanian women, Sofronie draws inspiration from Comaneci, who scored the world’s first perfect 10 at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. “I think that if she could concentrate and succeed, I can, too,” she said.

The best come to Deva, where they train every day and attend special classes at a nearby school. It’s a communist-style arrangement Belu likens to “keeping all the most important scientists together in the Silicon Valley.”

“I like to be near my girls 24 hours a day,” he said. “If one of them has a bad dream in the middle of the night, I’m there to ask her, ‘What happened?’ and give her a glass of water.”

Making it to the top is a big enticement for young women in impoverished Romania, where the average monthly take-home pay is just $170. Belu’s athletes get $200 a month in pocket money, and they’re pampered with maid services, nutritious meals, whirlpool baths and air-conditioned living quarters. Ponor’s room is jammed with her huge collection of stuffed animals.

Winning an Olympic medal means hitting the jackpot, with a $50,000 bonus, two cars, a free college education and a lifetime of rent paid by the government.

But it’s a tough life. Although the women are free to leave the campus unescorted, boyfriends and discos are strictly off-limits, and the training sessions are long and unrelenting.

“They barely have time to sleep,” said Belu’s assistant coach, Mariana Bitang. “We have no magic wand here. It’s just hard work. You can’t win gold unless you make some sacrifices.”

Belu and Bitang run a tight ship, barking out their athletes’ last names and shooting them withering looks when they make mistakes. The women work silently, freezing obediently after their routines to await any sign of approval from the coaches.

“Come on! We’re not playing games here,” Bitang shouts.

“No good. No good,” Belu calls out, his mustache twitching in a frown. A moment later: “OK — that’s the way to do it. Bine, bine. Good, good.”

Critics say the system is too tough on child athletes, and that the coaches drive their charges too hard.

Oana Petrovschi, a silver medalist in the uneven bars at the 2002 Worlds, quit last year after suffering two herniated discs — allegedly after being forced to train and compete while in a leg cast for an ankle injury. Belu vehemently denies that.

“I wanted to take a break, but they wouldn’t let me,” said Petrovschi, 18, who is suing the federation and coaches. “I’ve cried a lot. I would give anything for the Olympics not to come.”

Romania’s reputation has been bruised in other ways since Sydney, when impish Andreea Raducan won the individual all-around gold, only to be stripped of it after testing positive for a then-banned stimulant in two pills the team doctor gave her for a cold.

Several former top gymnasts have claimed that Romanian officials and coaches told them to lie about their ages so they could compete internationally while not yet the minimum 16. And three ex-Olympians caused an uproar for posing nude for a magazine in Japan.

Belu and Bitang even threatened to quit unless they were better paid.

These days, the fuss has faded, and the focus is squarely on the countdown to Athens.

“They’ll do a great job, I’m sure,” said Stoica, the federation chief. “We’re looking forward to celebrating something.”