David Popovici won the bronze medal after finishing 3rd in the final of the 100 meters freestyle at the Olympic Games in Paris. He already won a gold medal Monday night in the 200-meter freestyle.
Popovici was one hundredth of a second from the 2nd place and also one hundredth of a second from the 4th place. The gold went to the Chinese Pan Zhanle, with a time of 46:40, a new world record. Australian Kule Chalmers took the silver medal with a time of 47:48.
David Popovici recorded the time 47:49.
On Tuesday evening, Popovici finished second in the second semi-final, in 47 sec 66/100, ahead of the Chinese Zhanle Pan, 47 sec 21/100. The British Matt Richards, who at 200 meters lost the gold to Popovici by two hundredths, failed to qualify for the final of the event.
David Popovici was the world record holder in the 100 m freestyle (46 sec 86/100), but the Chinese Zhanle Pan was the one who dispossessed him of this record (46 sec 80/100), and on Saturday, in the relay, he also set a new Olympic record (46 sec 92/100).
Tough message for Romanian politicians
In an interview for TVR, after the 100 meters race, David Popovici spoke about the lack of conditions to perform in Romania and launched a message to Romanian politicians in which he highlighted that “we have an Olympic champion this year in Easter, in lately and nothing will change if we just talk about it.”
Popovici praised the infrastructure the foreigners have to train for the sports competitions, compared to him in Romania.
“Under these conditions, I train on Lia Manoliu, in the same pool where I learned to swim at the age of four, that’s why I’m so tanned with the traces of glasses, because I swim there in the open air. In the winter, when it’s cold outside, we train in a balloon where a person who is not used to it enters and stays for 3 minutes, enters and feels suffocated. Well, in those conditions we train, but I think it is possible.
Nothing will change just talking about it! It really needs to be pushed, it needs to be brought to the attention of all the people who deal with this kind of thing, we need to get down to business, because we have an Olympic champion every year at Easter lately.
I am glad that I managed to do this, I did it again for myself, for the country, for everyone, but I would like to have more and more medals. I’d like to see more than three people qualify for the Olympics for swimming.
We have quite a large delegation to the Olympics, but you look at many other countries that have the same or fewer inhabitants than us and they are triple, quadruple. Because more is invested in sport, sport is considered more important and it is not for nothing that there are more developed countries than ours.
So, for an educated, healthy Romania, we need to invest more in sports.
This is a message to all the politicians who talk about it, but at some point the message gets stuck somewhere. We need to do something! Because you see all the reactions of ordinary people watching TV, people in high positions. Everyone is happy, everyone is enjoying, but let’s enjoy more often, why not? Let’s have more Olympic champions, more medalists, more finalists, more Olympic qualifiers.”
After last night’s competition, David thanked all fans for the support in a brief Facebook post: “I felt you! Thank you!“