Leon Rotman
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Men's canoe sprint | ||
| Olympic Games | ||
 |
1956 Melbourne | C-1 1000 m |
|
1956 Melbourne | C-1 10000 m |
 |
1960 Rome | C1 1000 m |
Leon Rotman (born July 22, 1934 in Bucharest) is a Romanian sprint canoeist who competed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.[1]
Life and sporting career
Rotman is Jewish,[2] and was born to a working-class Jewish family. He took up several sports in the years immediately after World War II and was fascinated by canoeing after seeing the famous Czech champions Jan Brzák-Felix and Bohumil Kudrna compete on Lake Snagov near Bucharest in 1953. He joined the Dinamo Bucharest sports club, in the hope of getting one of the Czech-made canoes left by the two in Romania. He didn't, but he was remarked by famous coach Radu Huţan after becoming national champion in improvised canoes.
He would eventually compete at the Olympics on the first canoe ever made in Romania (at the factories in Reghin, Mureş County). At the 1956 Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, despite competing with a sprained ankle, Rotman won both the C-1 10000 m and the C-1 1000 m events, equaling Swede Gert Fredriksson's performance who, at the same Olympics, won gold in both individual kayak events.[2] He was the first Romanian to win two medals in one Olympic Games.[2] He went on to win bronze at the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome in the C-1 1000m event.[2] He was slightly less successful in other competitions (fifth in the 1957 and 1961 European Championships in C-1 1000 m, and seventh at the 1963 World Championships in C-1 10000 m).
He won however the Snagov Regatta seven times and six international regattas outside Romania. He won 14 national titles before his 1963 retirement.
See also
References
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- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
- Cu sportivii români la Melbourne, Editura UCFS, București, 1957. (Romanian)
- Horia Alexandrescu, Aur olimpic românesc, Editura Sport-Turism, București, 1979 (Romanian)
- 1956 Canoe/Kayak Flatwater medalists on the IOC website
- Romanian Canoe and Kayak olympic medalists' biographies on the Romanian Olympic Foundation website (Romanian)
- History of Canoe/Kayak in Romania on the FRKC website (Romanian)
- Sports-reference.com profile
- Articles with Romanian-language external links
- 1934 births
- Living people
- Sportspeople from Bucharest
- Jewish Romanian sportspeople
- Romanian canoeists
- Canoeists at the 1956 Summer Olympics
- Canoeists at the 1960 Summer Olympics
- Olympic canoeists of Romania
- Olympic gold medalists for Romania
- Olympic bronze medalists for Romania
- Olympic medalists in canoeing
- Male canoeists
- Medalists at the 1960 Summer Olympics
- Medalists at the 1956 Summer Olympics
