The latest from football, chess and gymnastics...
Ahead of the national football team’s group E match against Denmark, counting towards the preliminaries of the World Cup 2018, striker Bogdan Stancu, currently playing for Bursaspor in Turkey left the training camp. The medical condition he had when he turned up for the training session could not be improved for him to be able to play Sunday’s match hosted by a stadium in Cluj. Romania’s pool of regulars counts 27 footballers, of which 7 currently play in the domestic championship.
Romania ranks 4th in Group E, with 5 points of 4 games played and is hankering for a win that would book their qualification ticket. In the present edition of the preliminaries, Romania succeeded a 1-all home draw against Montenegro. Then Romania trounced Armenia away from home, 5-nil, managed a blank draw against Kazakhstan, also away from home, while in November 2016, Romania sustained a nil-3 defeat in the game against Poland.
Next it’s new from gymnastics, as Catalina Ponor and Marian Dragulescu have made it to the apparatus finals in the artistic gymnastics competition in Qatar’s Doha this coming Saturday. In the qualifiers, Ponor was granted the second best mark, 13,766 points, right after China’s Liu Tingting, who got 13,933 points. Also in the qualifiers, Marian Dragulescu got the fourth-best mark in the vault event, 14,366, after 14,566 points in the first attempt and 14,166 in the second. The best mark went to Le Tanh Tung of Vietnam, who hot 14,750, followed by Armenia’s Artur Davtyan who got 14,716 points and Christopher Remkes of Australia, who got 14,416 points. A week ago Catalina Ponor won the beam and floor finals in the World Cup Contest in Baku, Azerbaijan.
This coming weekend will see the finals of the national Chess Championships kick starting in the spa resort of Calimanesti. In the women’s finals held in the Swiss system, in 9 rounds, 19 chess players participate, among whom Grandmasters Corina Peptan, Irina Bulmagă, Luminiţa Cosma, Mihaela Sandu and Irina Ionescu.
Taking part in the men’s finals, also held in 9 rounds, are 60 chess players, part of whom had qualified coming straight from the six semifinals held in January. Qualifying by default are chess players with a minimum ELO rating of 2300. Among the 60 participants are 11 FIDE masters, 5 international masters and 10 Grandmasters, among whom Mircea Pârligras, Constantin Lupulescu, Andrei Istrăţescu, Vladislav Nevednichy, Mihail Marin and Bogdan Deac.
We go out with news from ice hockey, as this coming weekend will see a new game being played as part of the national ice hockey championship finals, pitting SC Miercurea Ciuc against Corona Brasov.
In the previous game, Corona grabbed a 4-1 win against SC Miercurea Ciuc and restored the draw, bringing to 2-all the overall score of the direct confrontations between the two teams. The final is played following the-best-in-seven-games system, with the coming fixtures being scheduled in Brasov, on March 24, then in Miercurea Ciuc on March 26, while a prospective crucial game is scheduled also in Brasov, on March 28.
(Translated by Eugen Nasta)
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