It was “touch and go” as to whether I would have a flight to go to the Romanian Nationals as all flights had been cancelled due to the volcanic ash already causing me to miss the Norwegian Nationals the weekend before but I was lucky this time and arrived on a warm and sunny Thursday ready to hold a Referee’s training seminar on the Friday. The seminar went well with about 20 trainee Referee’s participating, I was left with the difficult task of picking the best to start the next day at their first big competition, and big it was!

Saturday was the left hand and I was amazed to hear that they had 239 competitors just for the left hand!

Unfortunately their Head Referee Dragos Corcoveanu had flight problems and was unable to attend so many of his duties fell to the experienced W.A.F qualified Referee Victor Barbu. This was the first time I have worked so closely with Victor and it was refreshing to see that he demands a high level of discipline from the competitors, he is one of the strictest Referees in the world, it was a pleasure working with him.

Saturday evening I asked Mircea Simionescu-Simicel their Marketing Director (who is also their Technical Director) how many competitors they had for Sunday he said he did not have a final number yet as registration did not finish till Sunday morning but it will be more than the 250 they had expected so we would be starting a little earlier.

Well when I arrived Sunday morning it was a very busy place, Mircea came and told me they had 361 competitors for the right hand I asked “just the right hand” he said yes with the left hand we have 390 competitors and a total of 600 entries, I said that is fantastic it’s the same size as the European Championship last year and one of the biggest Nationals in the world.

The competition ran very well the new Referees performed very well there were no major problems but lots of excitement from many “up and coming” armwrestlers one junior class had 42 competitors and like the Polish Nationals it was all streamed live on the internet. Christian Dulgheru (Romanian President) and his team have a lot to be proud of in the promotion and organisation of this competition. I was very impressed and pleased to see another European country making such great strides forward in our sport.

Congratulations to the whole team.

David Shead

Guest Referee