Ion Panțuru

Ion Panțuru
nation	Romania
birthday	September 11, 1934
place of birth	Sinaia
size	172 cm
Weight	77 kg
date of death	17th January 2016
Career
position	pilot
society	Sinaia bobsleigh club
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 0 × 1 × 1 × EM medals 2 × 4 × 1 ×
winter Olympics bronze Grenoble 1968 two  Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Championships silver Lake Placid 1969 two bronze Lake Placid 1973 two  European bobsleigh championships silver Igls 1967 two gold Igls 1967 four silver St. Moritz 1968 four silver Cervinia 1969 two silver Cervinia 1969 four bronze Cortina d'Ampezzo 1970 four gold Igls 1971 four
last change: February 23, 2011

Ion Panțuru (born September 11, 1934 in Sinaia , Prahova , † January 17, 2016 in Ploieşti ) was a Romanian bobsledder .

With his brakeman Nicolae Neagoe Panțuru won the bronze medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble . It was the first medal for Romania at the Winter Olympics. In the four-man bobsleigh, Panțuru took fourth place, only a tenth of a second behind the medal ranks.

The following year he was able to win the silver medal in the two-man bobsleigh at the World Championships in Lake Placid , with Dumitru Focșeneanu as a brakeman. When he hitchhiked to the airport , he lost the medal. Thirty years later, she was found in a basement and brought back to Panțuru. Panțuru was able to win his last international medal again in 1973 at the World Championships in Lake Placid, when he again reached third place with pusher Focșeneanu.

Before Panțuru became a bobsleigh pilot, he was a soccer goalkeeper at Carpați Sinaia in the second Romanian soccer league.

Last Ion Panțuru lived in Buşteni .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ion Panțuru, cîştigătorul singurei medalii obținute de România la Jocurile Olimpice de iarnă, a murit la 81 de ani
2. ↑ Ion Panțuru, cel care alături de Nicolae Neagoe a adus bronzul olimpic la Grenoble 1968, especially fi înmormîntat azi, la Sinaia: "Nu credeam că mor și România nu mai ia o medalie!"