The Sports Year 2024
A look at the major performances obtained by the Romanian athletes in 2024
Florin Orban, 24.12.2024, 13:45
Romania made it back to the world’s top rankings in 2024. At the Olympics in Paris, the Romanian delegation came 23rd in the world’s medal ranking, a headway since the previous edition in Tokyo, where they ranked only 46th.
The Olympic Games kicked off in Paris in late July with a grandiose but controversial ceremony of issues less related to sports though…The first medals for Romania were brought by swimmer David Popovici: gold in the 200 meters free-style race and bronze in the 100-meter event.
Then Andrei Cornea and Marian Enache stepped onto the podium’s highest step in the double scull race and so did Simona Radiş and Ancuţa Bodnar in the similar women’s event. Ioana Vrînceanu and Roxana Anghel became silver medalists in the women’s pair event and so did Gianina van Groningen and Ionela Cozmiuc in the women’s lightweight double scull. The third Olympic title was obtained by the Romanian eight in the last day of the rowing competitions.
Weightlifter Mihaela Cambei reaped silver in the 49 kilogram category, while gymnast Ana Maria Barbosu obtained bronze in the floor event, upon a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport based in Lausanne.
Football again grabbed the limelight after the end of the Olympics, and Romania boasted a representative in the Champions League’s qualifiers, FCSB, one in the Europa League’s qualifiers, Corvinul Hunedoara, and another two in the Conference League: CFR Cluj and Universitatea Craiova. FCSB made it to the third round of the Champions league, where they were stopped in their tracks by the Czech side Sparta Prague. The Romanian champions later played in the playoffs for Europa League, where they outperformed LASK Linz of Austria. After six matches, FCSB ranked 10th in Europa League with three wins, two draws and a defeat.
In January they will be playing Qarabag of Azerbaijan, and Manchester United in a home match. Corvinul Hunedoara were knocked out in the second preliminary round by Rijeka of Croatia. They next joined the Conference League’s third round where they got outperformed by Astana of Kazakhstan. In the same competition Universitatea Craiova were knocked out of the qualifiers by the Slovenian side Maribor. CFR Cluj managed to obtain the best performance and made it to the play-offs, where they lost to Cypriote side Pafos.
In the second half of the year, Romania’s national football side played in the Nations League under the guidance of the famous Romanian headcoach and football legend, Mircea Lucescu, who had come back to the Romanian national side after almost 40 years. Romania won all the six matches in the second group of League C, which also included Cyprus, Lithuania and Kosovo. Our footballers won five matches and the match in Bucharest against Kosovo was decided by the UEFA after the visitors had left the pitch before the final whistle and the result was three-nil to Romania. So Romania ended up among the best four winners in the Nations League groups and secured their place in the World Cup playoffs. Lots drawn in December have placed Romania in Group H together with Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus and San Marino. Our footballers will be playing Bosnia and Herzegovina in March. The group’s winners are directly qualified whereas the 12 sides in the second positions in the groups plus the best sides in the 2024-2025 edition of the Nations League, which didn’t qualify in the preliminaries, will be vying for the four places available in the European zone.
We cannot end without mentioning the best Romanian athletes who left us in 2024. Canoe sprinter Vasile Dîba left us in February. Dîba stepped on the highest step of the podium at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. The former great handballer Stefan Birtalan, double world champion and Olympic medalist, left us in May.
Javelin thrower, Mihaela Peneş, gold medalist at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and silver medalist in Mexico City in 1968, left us in August. On December 2 we lost one of Romania’s greatest goalkeepers, Helmut Duckadam. He was dubbed the Hero in Seville, after he had saved four penalty shots in the 1986 finals of the European Champions Cup Steaua Bucharest won against Barcelona.
Dan Grecu, the first world champion in Romania’s men gymnastics, bronze medalist at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 also left us in December.
(bill)
