Category — sports

Euro2008 is over for the Romanian soccer team.

After a brilliantly executed tactical (albeit sinfully boring) goalless draw against world championship runner-up France and a sensational 1-1 against world champion Italy, after one of the most thrilling games in the competition, they lamentably failed to beat a relaxed Dutch squad to qualify to the quarterfinals.

Typical. 3 outstanding games in a row would have been too much. And yet, Romanian fans in the “yellow ground” had hoped till the last moment. It was for the first time in history that Romania had a significant contingent of fans at a final tournament abroad. Outstanding and touching experience to be there.

Some video impressions in the video corner in the bar on the right. The summer night dream is over.

Euro2008 (soccer, for the ones who don’t know on what world they live in :P) is in full swing this month.

Romania has survived a hard-fought game against World Champion runners-up France, 0-0. For a neutral person, quite a boring game, but from an “involved” perspective it was amazing, especially for the ones in the stadium. The atmosphere was sen-sa-tio-nal, for the first time our national team had almost 10000 supporters on a foreign stadium, matching and surpassing in noise the french supporters (!).

A terrible match is ahead, against a wounded World Champion, Italy (cool group we’re having, huh?). Italians have shockingly lost 3-0 in the first game, it is pretty much by and large “win or go home” for them. This will be the test.

I’ve collected photos and videos from this tournament. The photo gallery is here, and will keep being completed during this month, what you see below is the stand as of today.

The video collection is on the side. Enjoy, and

Hai Romania!

finally i realized what snowboarding is approximately about. i thought i knew from the first day, but i was wrong. in the first days all i did was brrrreak, turn, brrrreak, or slide laterally out of control, brrreak, turn, brrreak.
this weekend i went with L&C to Flims, for half a day. it is unbelievable how much you forget at the initial stages of learning a sport. and the gap is big, as you remember the last images with you being better at the end of the previous day, only to have an utter disappointment the next time you go. saturday i barely had time to get a bit in control, and the day was over. the good thing was though, i went on sunday, to flums, which is closer, and managed to wake up and go in the morning. it made a world of a difference.
stayed on the blue (easy) slope for a few times, till i finally managed to “connect” some curves, into a very pleasant slalom. ahaaa! so that’s what it is about. speed improved as well, so i didnt have to run over the flat areas any more, which was extremely annoying.
then i went on to the red slope, which is waaay longer, and therefore very enjoyable. steeper, but ok.
now i’m curious, next time i go, how bad the first descent will be. till then, a few pics below, taken with the phone camera.

Last night, the Romanian Lucian Bute, IBF world champion boxing for Interbox in Canada, had to defend his world title against a former world champion, William Joppy.

Here is Joppy’s preview of the fight

and here is the outcome

i finally tried it this week-end, after much postponing. it is, like a friend told me, “inspiring”.

i recommend:

1) read this tutorial
2) reserve a lesson with an instructor
3) go 2 hours or so BEFORE the lesson, pick a (VERY) small hill and get used to the board, doing the exercises in the tutorial. you will fall like there’s no tomorrow. for that, i forgot, put a pillow or something similar on your butt. i am not kidding, it will save much pain, and avoiding the (numerous) fall(s) is impossible. forget about being “cool”, and try to be “in once piece at the end”.
4) take the lesson.
5) practice immediately the next day, and if possible, a few days thereafter.

unfortunately, i cannot do the last point, as tomorrow is… working monday. but i’m glad i finally managed at least to try it out. worth every fall.

Dijon’s great touristic attraction for me on Sunday was the game between Romania and Hungary, at the women’s handball world cup. So I drove the 3 hours to the place, managed to get the ticket i had reserved via the internet (collection centers were all closed.. sundays.. so i got it finally from the sports hall directly). had time for a quick visit to check out the historic centre, and then - to the game.
both teams are world class, for me especially its a rare privilege to enjoy a romanian world class team , we usually excel, if at all :P, at individual sports, especially in the last few years. but this team is exceptional, and they played very well in the first half - had even 6 goals difference. but then… it happened. typical romanian style, lost concentration, dont know what they did, and hungarians caught up and at the end beat our asses.
even so, we knew before this game that we are through to the quarterfinals, and now the really tense… fun begins.
for me, it was fun even like this, a pleasant experience to be at a “world cup”, of no matter what sport. and since handball is pretty popular in europe, it was a nice crowd, nice atmosphere. funnily, the two little romanian and hungarian fan groups sat exactly next to each other, no buffer zone, nothing. they both shouted and sang for the whole duration of the game, rivalry, but completely harmless (i.e., sportsmanship) - something unfortunately more and more rarely heard of in football, for example.

pix below. click to see the slideshow in larger size, directly on picasaweb.

i had a day. what to do with it?
it snowed earlier this week, so i thought to check out a ski resort close to “base”. there was one at ~90km which sounded vaguely known, so i went there. it was closed, though, however apparently there was one open closeby. so i ended up in Flums, on the Flumserberg, an obscure “small” swiss ski resort, as they sey on the internet, quoted “only” at ** (two stars), with “only” 22 slopes and 17 skilifts, altitude 1000-2220m. you kidding me, right?, i thought. its a full-fledged skiing paradise. so i did, for half a day (only got there around 1pm). great powder snow, gorgeous view on the lake and churfirsten mountains. now i’m starting to really get why these people have half of the skiing world champions.

another shockingly refreshing surprise during the game i watched last night (on the internet). again, it was steaua bucharest, and again on the receiving end. this time, at the delivering end senegal’s gueye mansour from F.C. Politehnica 1921 Timisoara.

here’s the context: Steaua Bucharest, the best romanian team all-time, played against Universitatea Cluj, somewhere in Transylvania, a team ranked LAST, without a victory.

Steaua was leading 1-0, when this happened:

At the end “U” Cluj won 2-1.
This is why some people like football.

and last but not least, due to a win in Luxemburg and Albania tying Bulgaria (respect Tirana!), Romania qualified to the Football Euro 2008 championships! Yipeee!!