Sport in Romania

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Sport in Romania
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1.1Football (soccer)

• 1.1Football (soccer)
• Football (soccer) is by far the most popular
  sport in Romania. The governing body is the
  Romanian Football Federation, which belongs to
  UEFA. At international level, the Romanian
  National Football Team has taken part 7 times in
  the Football World Cup, and it had the most
  successful period throughout the 1990s, when
  during the 1994 World Cup in USA, Romania reached
  the quarter-finals and was ranked by FIFA on the
  6th place. The core player of this "Golden
  Generation" and perhaps the best known Romanian
  player internationally is Gheorghe Hagi
  (nicknamed Madadona of the Carpathians). Other
  famous players are Gheorghe Popescu, Miodrag
  Belodedici, and the still active Adrian Mutu and
  Cristian Chivu.

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Gheorghe Hagi
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• Nicknamed "The Maradona of the Carpathians", or
  "The hunk with the chunk", he is considered a
  hero in his homeland as well as in Turkey. He has
  won his country's "Player of the Year" award a
  record six times, and was recently named Romanian
  football player of the century. He played for the
  Romanian national team in three World Cups in
  1990, 1994 and 1998, as well as in three European
  Football Championships in 1984, 1996 and 2000. He
  won a total of 125 caps for Romania, being ranked
  second after Dorinel Munteanu, and scored 35
  goals, being ranked first.

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Handball

• Handball is the most popular sport in Romania
  after football. The Romanian men's national team
  has won the Handball World Cup a record 4 times
  (1961, 1964, 1970, and 1974). The only other team
  to have matched this record is Sweden in 1999.
  Steaua and Dinamo have also won several European
  titles over the years.
• Romania has produced many great handball players,
  including Gheorghe Gruia, Vasile Stânga, Cornel
  Penu, Ioan Moser, and Cristian Gatu.

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Basketball

• Basketball is a very popular sport among Romanian
  youth. Gheorghe Muresan was the first Romanian to
  enter NBA, and he became known as the tallest man
  ever to play in that league.
• Muresan (right) meeting with Nicholas F. Taubman,
  the U.S. Ambassador to Romania.
• Gheorghe Dumitru Muresan, also known as Ghi?a and
  "George", (born February 14, 1971 in Triteni,
  Romania) is a retired Romanian professional
  basketball player. At 7' 7" (2.31 m), he is
  arguably the tallest man to ever play in the NBA,
  standing a few millimeters taller than Sudanese
  player Manute Bol. Like Bol, both his parents are
  of average size, but unlike Bol his great height
  is the result of a pituitary disorder.

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Gheorghe Dumitru Muresan,
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Rugby union
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• Rugby union is a fairly popular team sport played
  in Romania with a tradition of more than 80
  years.
• The Romania national rugby union team, nicknamed
  The Oaks (Stejarii), have long been one of the
  stronger European teams outside of the Six
  Nations tournament. They take part in
  international competitions, notably the World
  Cup, the European Nations Cup and the Super Cup.
  Rugby union in Romania is administered by the
  Romanian Rugby Federation. They play in yellow
  and blue strips.Though maybe not the force they
  once were, the Romanian national rugby team has
  so far competed at every Rugby World Cup.

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Gymnastics

• In the 1976 Summer Olympics, the gymnast Nadia
  Comaneci became the first gymnast ever to score a
  perfect "ten". She also won three gold medals,
  one silver and one bronze, all at the age of
  fifteen. Her success continued in the 1980 Summer
  Olympics, where she was awarded two gold medals
  and two silver medals.
• Romania holds a long tradition in artistic
  gymnastics, especially in the ladies'
  competition. The most famous Romanian gymnast is
  Nadia Comaneci, who was the first gymnast to ever
  score a perfect 10 at the Olympic games, during
  the 1976 Summer Olympics

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Nadia Comaneci
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• Andreea Madalina Raducan (born September 30,
  1983) is a retired gymnast from Bârlad, Romania.
• Raducan began competing in gymnastics at a young
  age and was training at the Romanian junior
  national facility by the age of 12 1/2. As one of
  the standout gymnasts of the Romanian team in the
  late 1990s, Raducan was known for both her
  difficult repertoire of skills and her dance and
  presentation. Over the course of her four-year
  senior career, she won Olympic or World
  Championships medals on every event except the
  uneven bars and earned three individual World
  Championships titles, on the floor exercise in
  1999 and 2001 and the balance beam in 2001.

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• Catalina Ponor (born August 20, 1987) is a
  gymnast from Constanta, Romania. After beginning
  training with the national team in 2002, Ponor
  has won several medals with the Romanian team,
  along with individual beam and floor exercise
  medals. Hardly known until late 2003, Ponor has
  made several achievements in her career as a
  gymnast. Her career highlights include the 2003
  World Championships, where she was a triple
  silver medalist, and 2004 European Gymnastics
  Championships and 2004 Summer Olympics, both of
  which she was a triple gold medalist.

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Tennis

• Ilie Nastase, the tennis player, is another
  internationally known Romanian sports star. He
  won several Grand Slam titles and dozens of other
  tournaments and was the first player to be ranked
  as number 1 by ATP from 1973 to 1974 he also was
  a successful doubles player. Romania has also
  reached the Davis Cup finals three times.
  Virginia Ruzici was a successful tennis player in
  the 1970s.

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Ilie Nastase
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• Tiriac first appeared on the international sports
  scene as an ice hockey player on the Romanian
  national team at the 1964 Winter Olympics.
  Shortly after that he switched to tennis as his
  main sport. With fellow Romanian Ilie Nastase he
  won the men's doubles in the 1970 French Open and
  reached the Davis Cup finals several times in the
  1970s.

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Ion Tiriac
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Oina

• Oina is a traditional Romanian sport with
  similarities to baseball. At the first edition of
  the Olympics (1896), Romania offered to send two
  oina teams, but it was turned down by the
  International Olympic Committee, because oina was
  not played in other countries.
• In 1899, Spiru Haret, the minister of education
  decided that oina to be played in schools in
  Physical education classes and organized the
  first annual oina competitions.
• Romanian Oina Federation was founded in 1932, and
  reactivated at the beginning of the 1950s.

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Boxing

• Boxing is actually popular in Romania, especially
  in the TV broadcastings. Famous boxers include
  Mihai Leu, Lucian Bute and Leonard Doroftei.
• Lucian Bute (born February 28, 1980 in Galati,
  Romania) is a Romanian boxer now living and
  fighting out of Montreal, Canada, best known for
  winning the IBF championship at super
  middleweight in 2007. Bute was raised in a small
  town in Galati County named Pechea.

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Lucian Bute
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• At a height of 6'2 and an arm length of 27.5"
  (Southpaw), Bute has a professional record of 21
  wins (17 KO's), 0 losses and 0 draws and is
  ranked 4th in the world by Ring Magazine as of
  November 2007. He is the IBF super middleweight
  champion. Bute is trained by Stéphane Larouche,
  who also trained former world champions Éric
  Lucas and Leonard Dorin.

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Leonard Doroftei
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• In 1997, Doroftei became a professional boxer,
  signing with the Canadian club Interbox. On
  January 5, 2002 he won the WBA world lightweight
  title, winning in a split decision over
  Argentinian boxer Raul Horacio Balbi 112-115,
  114-113, 115-112. On May 31, the two fought again
  in Bucharest this second fight was a unanimous
  decision for Doroftei, 118-111, 117-112 and
  118-110.
• A lightweight title unification bout May 17, 2003
  with American boxer Paul Spadafora, the IBF
  champion, ended in a draw, 114-114, 115-113,
  114-115.

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Rowing and canoeing

• These sports are not very popular, but Romanian
  sportsmen have brought numerous successes,
  including 35 olmpic medals (18 gold) for rowing
  and 34 medals (10 gold) for

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Ivan Patzaichin
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Ivan Patzaichin

• a retired Romanian flatwater canoer who won seven
  Olympic medals, four gold and three silver, more
  than any other competitor in the history of the
  Canadian canoeing events.
• He also won eight world championship gold
  medals-
• C1 1000m (1973, 1977)
• C1 10,000m (1978)
• C2 500m (1979)
• C2 1000m (1970, 1981, 1983)
• C2 10,000m (1982)

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Chess

• Chess is fairly popular among some groups,
  especially retired people and mathematicians. The
  highest FIDE rating Romanian player is the
  grandmaster Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu

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In 1999, Nisipeanu as a clear outsider
made it to the semifinals of the FIDE World Chess
Championship by beating Vasily Ivanchuk in round
4 and Alexei Shirov in the quarterfinals only to
succumb to the eventual champion Alexander
Khalifman. Nisipeanu won the European Individual
Chess Championship 2005 in Warsaw with 10 points
out of 13 games, half a point ahead of runner-up
Teimour Radjabov from Azerbaijan.