Sports weekend

The latest from tennis, rowing and rugby

Florin Orban, 02.07.2021, 13:45

Romanian tennis player Sorana Cirstea ont
Thursday got through to the third round at Wimbledon. In the second round, she pulled off a 7-6, 3-6, 6-4 win against Viktoria Azarenka. It was Sorana Cirstea’s first win against the 12th-seeded Belarusian, who played the semis at Wimbledon in 2011 and 2012. In the
match against Cirstea, Viktoria Azarenka broke at 5-all in the first set, but she then lost her serve while serving for the match, with Cirstea winning the set at tiebreak, 7-5. Azarenka reigned supreme in the second set, taking an
early 3-nil lead and then winning the set, 6-3. In the third set, Azarenka also had a
2-nil and a 3-nil advantage, respectively, but Cirstea won four games in a row,
leading 5-3. Cirstea wasted two match points, also wasting a
point when it was her turn to serve. At 5-4 for the Romanian, Azarenka was getting closer to levelling the score.
However, Cirstea secured the win of the three-set tussle against Viktoria
Azarenka with a break.

In the third round, Sorana Cirstea goes up against the
British player born to a Romanian father Emma Raducanu, who provided a great surprise with
her straight-set win against her Czech opponent Marketa Vondrousova, 6-2, 6-4.

Rower Mădălina Bers and swimmer Robert Glinta will be
the Romanian delegation’s flag bearers at the Tokyo Olympics, according to the
Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee. Six-time European champion Madalina
Beres is a bronze medallist at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and a world champion
with Romania’s coxed eight crew. Robert Glinta is the first Romanian swimmer to
have been able to win a gold medal in the European championships. Robert was also
the first Romanian athlete to have secured his participation in the Tokyo
Olympics.

In news from rugby, on Saturday Romania is
pitted against Argentina in a test match. We recall that the two teams last
met in Bucharest, in 1992, when Argentina were the winners, 21-18. Argentina is
9th-placed according to the as-it-stands world rankings, while Romania is 18th-placed.
We recall that in 2003 and 2011, Argentina won both confrontations against
Romania. The Romanian Rugby Federation made public the fact that Romania’s test
match against Scotland, scheduled for July 10, 2021, was cancelled because of COVID-19 cases among the Scottish side.

(Translation by Eugen Nasta)