Written by Buciu Alexandru of
  Fighting
  
  
  
  As you all know, Romania is a country in the South-Eastern Europe, neibourghing Bulgaria, Ukraine, Moldavian Republic, Hungary and Serbia. The capital city is Bucharest, but this is not the only known city. We also have Constanta near the Black Sea, Timisoara near the Hungarian border and Cluj-Napoca in the Transilvanian area. I am sure Transilvania rang a bell for some of you ????.
  Leaving the bloody details behind, we move towards our beloved OCM. How did this country enter this land of races and tours? It all started with the first Romanian team to ever sign up to OCM, FlyHighhh on 10/7 - 2007. Unfortunately, it is not active anymore ????, but it cracked a hole that cannot be repaired anymore. It paved the way to many Romanian teams that came and gone in the game. One of them is the best Romanian team in OCM at the moment, Stil Ostil. They joined on 4/11 - 2011 and currently have 1396 points. Even though they don't have any Romanian riders at the moment, the manager Dragos can be proud of the fact that Ludvig Passer

is one of the riders in the team, Ludvig being a former TT world champion in season 33, while wearing the Stil Ostil jersey.
  Speaking about riders, do you know who is the most prolific Romanian rider at the moment? Stop! Don't jump to the Start tab and then Nations! Just keep reading ????. He is Gheorghita Bostina, who rode his whole career for Team Unibet. He currently has 740 points and holds the 54 th place in OCM. In the purpose of this article, we were given clearance to spoke with him about the Romanian national team jersey. A: "How are you, Gheorghita?" G: "I am fine! I just got back from a training routine. We had to cycle for 3 hours in a high speed exercise. God bless that coach! I hope he forgets to come to training one day!" A: Oh, you must be exhausted!" G: "To keep it official, no. Also given that in order to perform at the top level, one must exceed his own limitations I can live with the high rate of the training!". A: "Spoken like a true champion!. Tell me, how does it feel for you to race wearing the national team jersey?" G: "It feels wonderful. Everytime I am in a race, I feel I am not representing only myself or my team, I feel like I am representing millions of people." A: "And how does it feel to have this responsability?" G:"It feels like a gift and a curse at the same time. I feel lucky that the Romanian jersey is on my shirt and I saw that the respect of the peloton grew towards me since I became no. 1 for my country, but I also feel that everything I do translates into a general opinion towards my country. Romania is not as bad as some people try to show it. It is a beautiful country, with wonderful landscapes and an enourmously vast history. And I always try to show this to my fellow peloton colleagues." A: "So you feel like an ambasador for our country." G: "Is not really that I feel like one, but the jersey demands me to be. Or so I feel when I am wearing it." A: "Thank you for your time, Gheorghita! I wish the best of luck in your races and I hope you will bring us even more results in the future!" G: "Thank you! I hope the same!".
  We leave Gheorghita to go and have some lunch with his

colleagues and we move on with our article. Do you know anything about the Romanian young riders? I know you wanted to jump for that Start tab! Those who usually follow JHDZ's Late Show have an idea about this. Lately, two of the managers involved in a project meant to develop young Romanian riders were present in the show. David Popescu from familytour and myself from Fighting are part of this project, alongside Bilal and shok2. The last but not least member is DCM. And I left him the last one for a purpose. For everyone who checks his flag now will see that it is a Romanian one, but it wasn't always like this. Until recently, his flag was a Swedish one. He turned Romanian and joined our project as he likes our country and likes the project. To show you that this project is not just a utopic one, we invite you to check the results of the last WC U23. Please go the Start tab now! You will se there in top 3 the young Gregorian Jurca. He was discovered during this project and was fully trained by Bilal. Alongside Jurca, we are also proud to mention Gherman Cristache, Iosif Petescu, Ernest Chircus, Costel Onut and a technically insane rider, Anghel Vaduva. We hope that many other young Romanian riders will fill in this list and will enter the whole of fame of OCM.
  As there it cannot be any young without the old, I invite you to check Ieremia Cornea's results. The 33 year-old rider is one of the most prolific Romanian riders in the OCM history. He held the national jersey for many seasons, had more than 30 results for his team Skogs Riders and he was 16th in OCM in season 34.
  And as a conclusion and as a funny detail, did you know that the surname and the first name in Romanian are exactly the other way around than in English? For example, in Peter Johnson (the name is fictional), the first name is Peter and the surname is Johnson. In Buciu Alexandru (yeah, my name), the surname is Buciu and the first name is Alexandru.
  I leave you with this interesting fact and I hope this article opened your curiosity to learn more about Romania in OCM and beyond!
  
  Best regards,
  Alex