RRI Sports Club

Medal winners at the Grenoble Winter Olympics

Florin Orban, 14.01.2026, 13:45

There are only a few days left until the 2026 edition of the Winter Olympics, taking place in Italy. With the most important competition at the beginning of this year drawing closer, we look back at the performances that Romanian athletes have achieved, over time, on snow and ice. The greatest of these, at Olympic level, occurred 58 years ago, at the Grenoble Games, when Romania won the bronze in the two-person bobsleigh, through Ion Panțuru and Nicolae Neagoe. The Romanian crew was only overtaken by the legendary Italian pair Eugenio Monti – Luciano de Paolis and the German crew comprising Horst Floth and Pepi Bader.

These days, more precisely on January 17, we commemorate 10 years since Ion Panțuru, still regarded as the greatest bobsledder in Romania, passed away. He was born in Comarnic (located 100 kilometres north of Bucharest), on September 11, 1934. He played football at the beginning of his sports career and was a goalkeeper for the second-league team Carpați Sinaia. After switching to bobsledding, he quickly achieved some exceptional results and was accepted into the national team. As a bobsledder, he was part of the Romanian team at the 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976 Winter Olympics. At the opening ceremonies of the Innsbruck ’64 and Sapporo ’72 editions, he was the flag bearer of the Romanian delegation.

Nicolae Neagoe was also born in Prahova County, but in Sinaia, on August 2, 1941. Before switching to bobsleigh, he also did wrestling and football. Together with Ion Panțuru, he was part of both the two-person bobsleigh crew and the four-person crew that ranked 4th at the Grenoble Games. A year earlier, at the European Championship in Innsbruck, the four-person bobsleigh crew, with Panțuru, Neagoe, Petre Hristovici and Gheorghe Maftei, won the gold. Nicolae Neagoe passed away on April 29, 2023. (AMP)