2024 proved to be one of the best years in terms of sporting performances. At the Olympic Games in Paris, athletes from Romania won more medals than in the previous two editions combined. In Paris, Romanian athletes stepped onto the podium’s highest step three times, a performance they last achieved 16 years ago at the Beijing Olympics, from where they walked away with four gold medals.
Given all these high performances, the task of designating the best Romanian athlete of the year was no easy one. And for this reason we have chosen to refer to seven top athletes from Romania who compelled international recognition in the Olympic year 2024. They are swimmer David Popovici, female canoe sprinters Simona Radiş, Ancuţa Bodnar, Ioana Vrânceanu and Roxana Anghel, and last but not least male canoe sprinters Andrei Cornea and Marian Enache.
Even before the Olympic Games in Paris, swimmer David Popovici was the athlete most of the Romanian sports fans pinned their hopes on, and he didn’t let them down. He became the new Olympic champion of the 200-meters freestyle race and he also stepped onto the podium’s third step in the 100-meters event.
In the finals of the 200 freestyle in Paris, David started as the odds-on favourite. He was the owner of the season’s best result and also registered the best time in the qualifiers.
However, the final race was incredibly balanced and the Olympic champion, Lukas Maertens of Germany had an excellent start. US swimmer Luke Hobson and Matthew Richards and Duncan Scott of Britain also managed excellent shows in the race, which was eventually won by Popovici. In the 100-meters race however, Popovici came third and the gold medal went to Pan Zhanle of China who broke the world record with 40 hundredths. With two medals, gold and bronze, Popovici became Romania’s best athlete in the Olympics’ single events.
Andrei Cornea and Marian Enache became the new champions of the double scull event, although they didn’t manage good shows in the qualifiers. In the semis they went only third, not the best performance, but which proved enough to secure them a place in the finals. The hard lesson they learnt in the qualifiers and the semis made them to approach the final race with a different attitude, a race, which they won a second and a half ahead of the runner-up Dutch boat.
Cornea and Enache thus won the first Olympic gold for Romania in the men’s double scull race. Out of the 9 medals won by our delegation in Paris, 5 came from rowing. Out of the 13 medalists in the rowing competitions, two women pairs each won two medals, silver and gold. They are Ioana Vrânceanu and Roxana Anghel, who came second in the pair race and Simona Radiş and Ancuţa Bodnar, who got silver in the double scull contest. All four are also part of the Romanian eight which was soon to become the Olympic champion in Paris.
Vrânceanu and Anghel had earlier claimed the European title in Szeged, Hungary and became bronze medalists in the world championship hosted by Belgrade in 2023. They qualified without any problems for the semifinals in Paris, but the fight for a medal wasn’t easy. They had a slow start and were in the fifth position after the first 500 meters. However, they gradually advanced and managed to end the race in the second position after the Dutch Ymkje Clevering and Veronique Meester. Australia came third in the race.
Three years ago, at the Olympics in Tokyo, Radiş and Bodnar won the only gold medal for Romania. In 2022 and 2023 they became world champions and started as the odds-on favourites in Paris, but after the first 15 hundred meters in the semifinal race, they were only in the fourth position and only the first three teams would qualify for the finals. However, the Romanians managed a great comeback at the end of the race, which they eventually won. They lost the gold in the finals though to the team of New Zealand, which ended the race 14 hundredths before the Romanians. Vrânceanu, Anghel, Radiş and Bodnar were also part of the Romanian eight which won gold in the finals, five seconds ahead of the runner-up Britain.
(bill)
