Olympic Profiles – Athlete Florentina Iuşco

One of Romania's best hopes at winning a medal at the Tokyo Olympics

Florin Orban, 19.11.2020, 13:45

Athletics
competitions are back in the arena. Earlier this month Bucharest played host to
the Romanian Cup, while at the end of last week the city of Cluj hosted Romania’s
International Athletics Championship. Florentina Iuşco was one of the top-performing athletes. In both of the
aforementioned competitions, Florentina Iuşco won the triple jump and the long jump events. The scores she
obtained were not extraordinary. In the triple jump event, Florentina ranked
first with 13.84 meters, whereas in Cluj she jumped 13.70 meters. In the long
jump event, where she managed to qualify to the Olympic Games, she jumped 6.40
meters in Bucharest and 6.43 meters at the International Championship in Cluj.
By way of comparison, Romania’s other athlete who will represent us in the
Olympic Games, Alina Rotaru, jumped 6.67 meters at a contest in Poland. It is
only normal for Florentina Iuşco
to vie for more. I’m happy to have won, but I’m not happy with the result I
got. In the last two weeks I didn’t train the way I wanted, but this is no
excuse. The National and Balkan championships are next, and I hope to jump
better in the upcoming competitions, Florentina Iuşco said in Cluj.

Florentina Iuşco was born April 8, 1996 in Deva, central
Romania. She is enrolled at Cetate Deva sports club and is currently coached by
Nicolae Alexe. In 2015, at the indoors European Championships in Prague, she
won bronze in the long jump event, with a score of 6.79 meters, setting a new
European record in the youth competition. Soon after she married and gave
birth, Florentina Iuşco took up
another sport, bobsleigh. In 2018, alongside Andreea Grecu, she became the world
champion in the youth competition. In 2019 she got her best results in the long
jump, jumping 6.87 meters at the International Championship in Cluj. Then, at
the National Championship in Pitesti last year, she jumped 6.92 meters, her
career best.

(Translated by V. Palcu)