Sports Flash

The town of Otopeni, located north of Bucharest, is these days the capital city of European swimming. Europe's best junior swimmers fight for the Championships medals, in a competition Romania plays host to, as an absolute first. The competition is hosted by a brand-new sports compound, with an Olympic swimming pool, another one for diving and four other swimming pools for recovery and warming up. The overall costs for the new compound stood at 30 million euro. Hosting its first ever top-flight sports competition, the Otopeni Olympic Compound has a 2, 800 seating capacity.

The new star of Romanian swimming, David Popovici, was undoubtedly the top performer of the first competition days. We recall that in June this year in Budapest, David won the 100m and 200m world titles. In the first three days of the competition in Otiopneo, David stepped onto a step of the podium three times. On Tuesday, David Popovici won the 4X100m freestyle event (the 100m relay event). Other members of Romania's relay team were Vlad Stancu, Ştefan Cozma and Patrick Sebastian Dinu. Second came Great Britain, while 3rd-placed was the team of Italy.

On Wednesday, David Popovici won the 200m freestyle event. David thus defended the title he won last year at the European Junior Championships in Rome. Also stepping onto a step of the podium was Italy's Roberto Galossi and Jacob Whittle of Great Britain. David Popovici is also a world record holder in the juniors' version of the 200m freestyle event. On June 20, at the World Seniors' championships in Budapest, David clocked 1 minute, 34 seconds and 21 hundredths of a second.

Also on Wednesday, at the mixed 4x100m relay event, Romania came in second. Although they qualified for the sixth best timing, the Romanians succeeded a well above-par race. Romania dominated the first three legs of the relay race, but for the last hundred meters Hungary took the lead and maintained it, winning the relay. Stepping onto a step of the podium were David Popovici, Patrick Dinu, Bianca Costea and Rebecca Diaconescu. The competition is ongoing until this coming Sunday.

(EN)