Olympic archive: Romania’s Olympic trials (1984)
Romania was the only eastern blog country not to follow the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. ITN’s Paul Davies travelled to Bucharest to watch athletes as they trained.
Following the US-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow games, the Soviet Union orchestrated a boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, inviting their eastern European, African and Asian allies to attend an alternative event called the Friendship Games instead, writes Ian Searcey.
In July of 1984, Paul Davies reported for Channel 4 News from Romania – the only Warsaw Pact country to reject the boycott and agree to attend the Californian games – as athletes in Bucharest battled for a place on the Olympic team.
Davies watched a number of the track and field medal hopefuls going through their paces, including discus thrower Florenta Tacu-Craciunescu, who went on to win bronze in LA, and distance runners Doina Melinte and Maricica Puica, who both took gold (Melinte in the 800m, Puica in the 3000m).
Although happy to promote their independence from Moscow, the Romanian authorities were less keen on allowing their athletes to discuss with journalists their reaction to the Soviet-led boycott. In an interview with Davies, long jumper Valeria Ionescu admits that she knows her eastern bloc comrades will be very disappointed to be missing the games after all the hard work put in since Moscow.
Western critics of the hard-line Communist regime were quick to point out that the excellent, modern sporting facilties being provided by a government determined to repeat the success of gymnast Nadia Comaneci and ensure an impressive medal haul at the Olympics, were in marked contrast to the living conditions of the majority of Romanians.
Only a short drive from the Bucharest stadium, Davies found a village scraping a rural living in conditions that had hardly improved in hundreds of years.
The report ends high in the mountains, where the ITN crew was allowed to observe Romanian canoeists in training. They were favourites to bring home the most medals. In the end, while the pairing of Ivan Patzaichin and Toma Simionov took gold in the Canadian pairs, hot favourite Costica Olaru could only manage a bronze in the 500m singles.
Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s decision to allow his team to attend the Los Angeles worked out well for Romania. In the absence of its main eastern Europeam competitors, the country won an impressive 53 medals at Los Angeles, 20 of which were gold.
