Sports Roundup

A roundup of the most important sporting events

Florin Orban, 25.06.2024, 13:45

Everyone’s eyes are these days pinned on the European Football Championship in Germany. However, there are also other top competitions, with Romanian athletes grabbing goods results in some of them. In Belgrade, for instance, at the European swimming championships, David Popovici once again  proved he is the fastest swimmer on the continent in the 100m and 200m freestyle events. In the 100m race, he won in 46.88  seconds, just two hundredths of a second away from the European record he has been holding since 2022. We recall that Popovici’s performance at that time also represented a new world record, which was beaten only in February this year by China’s Pan Zhanle. In the 200m race, David Popovici finished the final in 1.43,13 seconds, only 16 hundredths more than two years ago, in Rome, when he set a new competition record. He was followed by Danas Rapsys of Lithuania who finished two seconds later.

At the European Fencing Championships in Switzerland, Romania’s men’s saber team, made up of Răzvan Ursachi, Radu Niţu, Matei Cîdu and George Vlad Covaliu, won silver. In the round of 16, the Romanian fencers ousted Switzerland 45-13. In the quarterfinals they defeated Italy 45-37, and in the semifinals they knocked out Turkey 45-44. In the final, however, Hungary defeated Romania 45 to 40. The medals grabbed by the Romanian team were the only ones won by the Romanian delegation in Basel. Also last week, the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee announced that Eduard Ionescu and Ovidiu Ionescu qualified to the men’s singles event of the table tennis competition at the Olympic Games. They have qualified to the Paris Olympics owing to their standing in the world ranking. The wrestler Răzvan Pîrcălabu also qualified for the Games, in the Greek-Roman style, in the 60kg category. He owes his presence in the competition in French capital-city due to a decision of the International Olympic Committee, which declared several wrestlers representing Russia and Belarus ineligible. Exactly one month before the start of the Games, Romania has 93 qualified athletes.

Romania on Wednesday will play Slovakia the third group match at EURO 2024. In the last fixture of Group E, Romania need a tie against Slovakia to advance to the round of 16. In the first two games of the tournament hosted by Germany, Romania defeated Ukraine 3-0, then lost 0-2 to Belgium. (VP)