Sports Roundup

A round-up of the weekend's major sporting events

Florin Orban, 09.01.2023, 13:45

The women’s handball sides
representing Romania in the Champions League obtained some remarkable results
last weekend. On Saturday, in the competition’s group A, CSM Bucharest secured
a 35-26 win against Banik Most of the Czech Republic. Cristina Neagu scored
most of the goals for the Romanian side, nine, helping them to consolidate
their first position in the group’s ranking with 17 points. They are followed
by the last year’s winner of the trophy, Norwegian side Vipers Kristiansand
with 15 points. CSM will be up next against Danish side Odense.

In group B, Rapid on Sunday
clinched a 39-29 home win against Montenegrin side Buducnost Podgorica. The
Dutch Estavana Polman scored six goals for the hosts, pushing them to the third
place in the group with 16 points, the same number of points as the team on the
second place, Hungarian side Gyor, and a point less than the group’s leader,
Metz of France. Rapid will be up against Esbjerg of Denmark on the latter’s
home turf.

Romanian side SCM Râmnicu Vâlcea started
off on the right foot in the European League with a home win against Hungarian
side Vác, which they defeated 40 – 30, in group D. Iryna Glibko of Ukraine and Asma
Elghaoui of Hungary were the hosts’ best scorers each with nine goals. Valcea
will be taking on Paris 92 in an away game on Sunday.

Australia is these days seeing a
couple of tennis tournaments in preparation for the year’s first Grand Slam
tournament in Melbourne. Irina Begu was the best Romanian player in the
aforementioned tournaments. Begu made it to the semifinals of the Adelaide
International 1, with more than 826 thousand dollars in prize money. The
Romanian was stopped in her tracks by Arina Sabalenka of Belarus, who won the
match in two sets, 6-3, 6-2. Begu won 43, 323 dollars and 185 WTA points while Sabalenka
eventually won the tournament with a 6-3, 7-6 win against Linda Noskova of the
Czech Republic. In the Adelaide
International 2 tournament, Sorana Cirstea of Romania lost in the first round
to Beatris Haddad Maia. The Brazilian won the match 7-6, 6-1. Irina Begu is
directly qualified for the competition’s main draw and will be taking on Storm
Hunter of Australia.

(bill)