Ion Drîmbă

Ionel Alexandru "Ion" Drîmbă (born March 18, 1942 in Timișoara , † 2006 in Brazil ) was a Romanian fencer . He was a gold medalist in the Olympics .

Life

Ion Drimba was one of the top Romanians in fencing. He won the national championship in 1964 in saber and 1964, 1968 and 1969 in foil . Drimba participated in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome , the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo and where in 1968 in Mexico City in part. In Rome he competed in foil singles. He was able to reach the second round and finally finished sixth. Four years later in Tokyo, Dimba competed in individual and team competitions with the foil and the saber. In the foil singles he finished ninth, with the team Drimba was sixth. With the saber he placed 5th, while he finished seventh with the team. In Mexico City, he only appeared in the foil competitions. With the team he was favored after they had won the world championships last year. In the Olympic competition, the Romanian foil team narrowly lost to the Soviet Union in the semifinals. Ion Drimba won the gold medal in singles. It was the first Romanian Olympic victory in foil singles.

In 1969 Ion Drimba won bronze with the foil team at the World Championships. He then fled to the West on a competition trip. Drimba went to Upper Swabia, where he worked as a trainer in Ravensburg, Biberach and Laupheim, and later he went to Tauberbischofsheim , where Emil Beck hired him as a trainer. He later worked in the USA, Brazil and Venezuela. After the fall of the Iron Curtain he returned to Romania, but failed in his attempt to become president of the Comitetul Olimpic și Sportiv Român . He died in Brazil in 2006.

literature

• Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle III. Mexico City 1968 - Los Angeles 1984. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-328-00741-5 .

Web links

• Ion Drîmbă in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )