Athletes of the Week on RRI – Romania’s table tennis team

Our players scooped gold in the European Championships

Florin Orban, 19.09.2017, 13:08

At present Romania has some of Europe’s top table tennis players. In the last few years our players have won numerous medals, both in doubles and in singles competitions. This year Romania won the team event at the European Table Tennis Championships hosted by Luxembourg. It was the first European title after a 12-year break. For this reason, we have designated Elizabeta Samara, Daniela Dodean Monteiro and Bernadette Szocs, Athletes of the Week on RRI.

Elizabeta Samara currently holds the most table tennis titles. She was born on April 15, 1989 in Constanta. Prior to the Luxembourg tournament she had won six gold medals in the European Championships: in 2005 with Romania’s team in Aarhus, Denmark, in 2009 in Stuttgart, Germany in the doubles event, then in the mixed doubles in 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey, and finally in 2012 in Buzau, Romania, also in the mixed doubles. That same year Samara won the doubles gold in Herning, Denmark. In 2015 she won the women’s singles at the European Championships hosted by Ekaterinburg, Russia.

Daniela Dodean-Monteiro was born on January 13, 1988. So far she won three European trophies, of which two in the women’s doubles, jointly with Elizabeta Samara in 2009 in Stuttgart, and then in 2012 in Herning. Last year she won the mixed doubles trophy with her husband, Joao Monteiro of Portugal, at the European Championships hosted by Budapest, Hungary.

Bernadette Szocs joined Romania’s national team at only 16 years of age, in 2011, when she won silver with the team at the European Table Tennis Championships hosted by Sopot, Poland. She was born in Targu Mures on March 5, 1995. (Translated by V. Palcu)