Wrestler Vasile Puscasu
No less than 34 Olympic medals are on the record for Romanian wrestling. Of those medals, seven were gold, eight silver and nineteen bronze. Of the seven Olympic titles, six were won in the Greek-Roman style and only one in free-style. Vasile Puscasu is Romania's only champion in freestyle wrestling.
Vasile Puscasu was born on May 2, 1956, in the commune of Barsanesti, in Bacau county, in the east, Vasile Puscasu first took up football. When he was sixteen, he won a village contest in traditional wrestling, tranta, in Romanian. Vasile was then selected for the juniors' pool of regulars of a local club. Three months later, he won the national title in a juniors' competition. At the age of 20, Vasile Puscasu was just about to participate in Montreal Olympics, but he was maneuvered out of the competition by the then management of the national seniors' pool of regulars.
Vasile Puscasu's first great performance occurred in 1977, when the Romanian wrestler walked away with the bronze medal he won at the World Championships in Lausanne. Later on, in the great competitions worldwide, Vasile Puscasu stepped many times onto a step of the podium, but never on the first one. However, Puscasu won gold at the Olympic Games in Seoul, in 1988.
Prior to the Olympic Games in South Korea, Vasile Puscasu had a great international experience, and it was for the third time that he competed in the Olympic Games. Puscasu was a defending European vice-champion and world champion, and each time he sustained defeats in the final by Soviet challenger Leri Habelov. At the Olympic Games in Seoul, Vasile Puscas's trail included wins against Kenya's Maisiba Obwoge, Federal Germany's Wilfried Colling and Georgyi Karaduchev of Bulgaria. Puscasu also grabbed wins against Istvan Robotka of Hungary and William Scherr of the United States. In the final, the Romanian faced Soviet Habelov once again. This time Puscasu adopted the appropriate tactics in the fight. He won one point, and then went at all lengths to avoid being trapped into delicate situations. And he did win the final, 1-nil, thus earning his place among the great Romanian athletes of the twentieth century.
(Translation by Eugen Nasta)
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