Olympic Update
The Winter Olympic Games are in full swing in South Korea’s city of PyeongChang. A delegation from Romania is also taking part in the competition, but their results so far have been below par.
Florin Orban, 21.02.2018, 13:20
The crew made of Mihai Cristian Tentea and Nicolae Ciprian Daroczi came in 18th in the two-men bobsleigh event. The gold medals went to competitors from Canada and Germany. The Romanians came in 14th after the first round, then they were ranked 17th following the second round, dropped to 25th position after the 3rd round and eventually settled on 12th position in the last round.
On aggregate, the Romanian crew clocked 3 minutes, 18 seconds an 98 hundredths. Canada’s Justin Kripps and Alexander Kopacz, jointly with the all-German crew made of Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis, grabbed gold, since either crew clocked 3 minutes, 16 seconds and 86 hundredths.
In the Winter Olympics’ most popular event, the downhill event, the Romanian skier Monica Germaine Caill was ranked 28th, the Olympic downhill champion being Italy’s Sofia Goggia. Goggia clocked 1 minute, 39 seconds and 22 hundredths, that is nine hundredths of a second earlier than Norwegian challenger Ragnhild Mowinckel, who grabbed silver. Bronze medallist was Lindsey Vonn of the USA, who arrived 47 hundredths of a second later than her contenders.
After 12 days of competition, Norway has the lead in the nations’ rankings, with a tally of 11 gold, 10 silver and 8 bronze medals. Germany comes next with 11 gold medals, 7 silver and 4 bronze medals.
Last week saw the best performance of the Romanian delegation in PyeongChang achieved by Raluca Strămăturaru, who came in 7th in the women’s singles of the luge event. We recall that Raluca Strămăturaru’s result is the best performance ever to have been succeeded by a Romanian athlete in the winter Olympics since 1994.