RRI Sports Club
A historic performance for Romania's table tennis
Florin Orban, 11.12.2024, 13:45
In the second half of last century Romania used to boast some of the world’s best table tennis players. Between 1957 and 1975, Maria Alexandru, for instance, reaped 12 medals in world championships, three gold, five silver and four bronze.
Asia came back with a vengeance in recent years though and its players became better and better preventing their European counterparts from making it to the competitions’ final stages.
In men’s world rankings, for instance, only three non-Asians are among the top ten players, a Frenchman, a Brazilian and a Swede. In women’s competition though, the top 13 players are from Asia. Next after these top 13 players comes an athlete from Romania, namely, Bernadette Szőcs, currently ranking 14th, followed by Austrian Sofia Polcanova, who was born in the Republic of Moldova.
Several days ago, in the mixed contest of the World Cup held in Chengdu, China, the Romanian side exceeded all expectations and came fourth.
The Romanians secured wins against the teams of Taiwan, and Singapore and lost to South Korea.
In the second stage they clinched an 8-3 win against France, 8-0 against the USA and 8-2 with Japan. Then our athletes won 8-5 against Germany but lost to China 0-8. Thus Romania managed to make it to the semifinals for the first time. Last year we recall that Romania was stopped in its tracks in the competition’s first stage.
The Romanians took on China for a place in the finals but lost 8-1. The only Romanian point was obtained by the mixed pair Ovidiu Ionescu / Bernadette Szőcs.
The two won a set out of the three they played against the world’s best pair made up of Chuqin Wang şi Yingsha Sun. The Romanians also lost the battle for the third position to Hong Kong.
(bill)
