Chair of the National Agency for Sports (ANS) Elisabeta Lipa on Saturday said that Romania’s main objective is not to reach the threshold of 100 Romanian athletes qualifying for the Paris Summer Olympics, as more important is for the athletes to be well prepared.
„I don’t think our main goal is to reach the threshold of 100 athletes qualified for Paris. Of course it will be good to do that. But what I want is for the qualified athletes, as many as they will be, to be extremely well prepared and to represent their country as well as possible at the Olympic Games. And I hope that together we will enjoy beautiful results,” Lipa, told an International Children’s Day event on Saturday organised by the National Agency for Sports in Bucharest.
Romania currently has 89 athletes qualified for the 2024 Olympic Games, in 14 sports.
The former Olympic rower champion said that she expects in Paris a Romanian underdog athlete to spring a surprise and win a medal.
„From my experience – because I participated as an athlete in six editions of the summer Olympic games – I can say that each time there were surprises and exceptions. And I hope that in Paris we will be that exception. I don’t make predictions; I don’t say where I think the surprise medal might appear. Because the exception comes from where you don’t expect it. And it would be unfair of me to say that I expect a result from I don’t know what sports. I really don’t want to put pressure on athletes, because as the start of the competition approaches, the stress is very high. And let someone else say that it’s easy there, of course they don’t know who… No, no sport is easy. Of course, some athletes we rely on to get medals, some to reach the finals, some to participate as well as they can, but the pressure is also great because they put it on themselves,” she said.
Lipa criticised the former Minister of Sports, Eduard Novak, who recently mocked on a social media site the official equipment of Team Romania at the Olympic Games in Paris wearing a raincoat, gloves and a helmet, all yellow.
„It’s an uninspired decision, especially coming from a former sports minister. Maybe in that gear he could come to Children’s Day today and do some demo here. But having such behaviour, especially since the equipment with which the Romanian delegation will parade in Paris has not been officially presented. And then if it hasn’t been presented, you can’t even say whether or not it’s beautiful. There are almost two months before we leave for Paris, and I cannot let anyone laugh at our athletes when they put on their equipment at the Olympics. I also wore a lot of parade outfits, of course there is no accounting for taste. But overall, the delegation has to look very good because every four years it deserves it.”
AGERPRES
