Romanian Sport Stories
A champion with a broken paddle
Florin Orban, 31.03.2026, 13:45
Ivan Patzaichin was the greatest Romanian canoeist of all time. All along his career he reaped 8 world titles between 1970 and 1983, as well as 4 Olympic gold medals at the
five Olympic Games he attended between 1968 and 1984. He was born on November 26th 1949 and in 1967 he signed up with Dinamo Bucharest Sports Club. He was inspired by the performance obtained by three boys from his native village in the Danube Delta who had earlier become world champions in Berlin. Patzaichin obtained his first notable performance three months later, when he came in second in the
national under twenty-one championship. A year later in 1968, in Mexico, he won his first Olympic gold in the 1000 meter men’s canoe double race together with Serghei Covaliov.
Patzaichin made history at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 after
his paddle had broken right at the beginning of the 1000 meter qualifying race. The referees didn’t stop the race as regulations required, so Patzaichin had to use what
was left of the paddle to end the race three minutes after the first boat. There was a lot of talk, but the Romanian was eventually allowed to compete in the semifinals on September 8th when he ended the race three seconds ahead runner-up
Czech Jiří Čtvrtečka. The Romanian was 20 seconds faster than the winners of the other series and became the odds-on favourite of the finals race on September 9, where he obtained a clear win almost four seconds ahead the runner-up, Tamas Wichmann of Hungary. By the end of his career Patzaichin won two more Olympic gold medals: in 1980 in Moscow and in the 1000 meter double race of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles four years later together with Toma Semionov.
After withdrawing from competitions, Patzaichin coached Romania’s kayak-canoe team for many years, winning numerous medals in European, world and Olympic contests. He later got involved in various projects of promoting the Danube Delta, its people and traditions. He is staging traditional boat contests and supports various projects on sustainable tourism in the region. He left us in September 2021.
