“My name is Fica Mariana Madalina and I am a high-performance athlete, having won over 120 medals in athletics. At the age of 5, my father took me to gymnastics where I trained for 6 years, and then I started athletics at Pandurii Targu-Jiu. In the first year of athletics, I had the best result in the country and became the National Champion in the 800-meter race. Later, I went to study in Bucharest and became a physical therapist, but I didn’t give up on sports, where I specialized in the 400-meter hurdles.
Each medal reflects years of hard work, effort, discipline, choices, and sacrifices. An image that reflects a life story, with many ups and downs. They have all helped me become the person I am today.
I am an athlete who has not practiced in optimal conditions. I always have many patients before training and manage to eat very little. I am a person who has slept overnight at work and competed the next day, winning a medal at the national championship. I am a person in whom strong mental predominates and who loves competition and does it with enthusiasm.
As a competitive athlete, for me, the pandemic period was a setback in terms of physical training, as well as limiting my freedom to train specifically.
Training happened around the block (on asphalt, being quite demanding on the tendons) and at home, where I can say I had an advantage in that I could focus more on technical details to improve my mobility and muscle imbalances. As soon as the restrictions were lifted, I resumed my training and realized that I had a setback in terms of breathing capacity (since we had to train with a mask).
In conclusion, the pandemic period came with disadvantages in terms of sports performance, at least for half a year afterwards.”
Project partners: Scout Society (Romania), Türkiye Okul Sporları Federasyonu (Turkey), Futbolo mokykla klubas Lituanica (Lithuania), BK-95 (Latvia)
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
