By Retta Race on SwimSwam
Olympic champion David Popovici of Romania recently spoke to the media about his home nation’s lack of competitive conditions and premier training facilities.
Despite his success, collecting 200m free gold and 100m free bronze at last summer’s Olympic Games among his impressive achievements, Popovici described his relatively mediocre training conditions at the Lia Manoliu pool in the capital city of Bucharest as a plea for Romania to invest more in its athletes on multiple levels.
The freestyle ace stated recently on a podcast, “If I were to bring my opponents or friends from other countries to visit or train with me at ‘Lia Manoliu,’ they would say that I’m making fun of them. They would say, ‘it’s a joke, show us where you actually train.’
“I am convinced that they wouldn’t believe me.” (MCN Podcast)
“For 3-4 months a year, when it’s cold, an improvised dome is placed over the pool, and everyone coughs their lungs out because there is too much chlorine and there isn’t a very good ventilation system, considering that I don’t have a proper gym where I can train.
“You can’t get such a gym, no wonder it becomes a miracle to achieve sports performance in Romania. I am lucky that I can also train at Dinamo, at my club. Other swimmer friends of mine go to Bulgaria. It’s not normal, and I want to talk about this a lot,” said Popovici, during the MCN podcast hosted by Cosmin Nedelcu.
He continued, “That’s why I and very few athletes are in this position of champions in sports. We don’t have a real strategy for sports, we don’t have such a great interest from politicians in sports.”
Popovici also described the path that led him to coach Adrian Radulescu and his other resources.
“Just because my father searched a lot, I managed to gather a very good team, with a nutritionist from the United States, a video analyst from Belgium, and physical trainers from Romania.
“We somehow came together, but athletes should have them from a young age and be provided by the state, because you end up representing the state.”
As a nation, Romania collected nine medals in Paris, spanning the sports of swimming, rowing, weightlifting and gymnastics. That was a significant improvement from the 2020 Games in Tokyo where Romania brought home 4 medals in total from rowing and fencing.
At one time, Popovici had intended to study psychology at the University of Bucharest. Last year he decided to change course and put those plans on hold, saying “I wanted to try with college in the year of the Olympics to do both, but I saw that I couldn’t focus on training with college as much as I would have liked.”
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Olympic Champion David Popovici Talks Mediocre Training Opportunities In Romania