Sports Flash

Romania's kayaking and canoeing team is competing for medals at the European Championships in Portugal

Florin Orban, 11.06.2026, 13:45

Montemor-o-Velho, Portugal, is hosting the 2026 Paddle Europe Sprint, Paracanoe and Masters Championships   The competition runs through Sunday, June 14. Romanian fans are pinning most of their medal hopes on the double canoe pair of Ilie Sprîncean and Oleg Nuță. The two athletes posted strong times at last month’s World Cup in Germany, though they did not make it onto the podium. In 2023, at the World Championships in Duisburg, Sprîncean and Nuță won bronze medals in the 1,000-meter canoe double event. The current top Romanian canoeist, Cătălin Chirilă, will be absent from the European Championships in Portugal due to serious health issues and will likely miss the entire 2026 season.

The sports media in Bucharest are reporting that Darius Olaru, captain of the Bucharest-based team FCSB, is set to join the Belgian club Royale Union Saint-Gilloise. According to the aforementioned sources, the transfer is valued at 3 million euros. Olaru has been captain of the former Romanian champions since 2022, when he took over from Florin Tănase, who had left for the Arab countries. In the meantime, Tănase has returned, but the captain’s armband has remained with Olaru. With FCSB, the player has won one Romanian Cup, two national championships, and two Romanian Super Cups. He competed in European competitions from 2020 through this year, with the exception of the 2021–2022 season, when he was injured and FCSB’s run ended prematurely without him.

Romanian football champions Universitatea Craiova will hold their summer training camp in Austria, as they do every year. The team’s training camp is being hosted by the town of Neustift im Stubaital, in the Tyrol region. Until then, the players from Craiova are on vacation, and the club’s management is handling the transfers needed to strengthen the squad ahead of the Champions League qualifiers. Craiova hasn’t made any major moves yet, but they have managed to extend the contract of defender Adrian Rus, a player with 23 caps for the Romanian national team. Rus was also the hero of the last friendly match against Wales, which ended 2-1, after scoring the winning goal for the Romanian national team. Last year, Universitatea Craiova advanced past the qualifiers of a European competition in the new format for the first time, reaching the main group stage of the Conference League. (MI)