On Simona Halep and the pride to be Romanian

Beyond being a great personal performance, Simona Halep’s victories in the WTA Finals are reminders of why we are proud to be Romanian. Back in elementary school one of my favorite assignments was to write an essay on why I am proud to be Romanian. I liked it because it was easy to write about our great ancestors: the brave Dacians and the proud Romans, or great leaders such as Mircea the Old, Stephen the Great, Vlad the Impaler, Michael the Brave or the wise prince Dimitrie Cantemir. Many times they were surrounded by much powerful enemies, or their lands invaded by huge armies of the Ottoman sultan, or of some Polish king, or of the Tatar khans. But these local leaders stood their ground, didn’t flee from danger, and despite being outnumbered, they defied the odds and triumphed. They fought for this land, for its forests and its riches, and most important of all, for the freedom of their people. Thanks to them, we are here today, and we’ve made it as a 2,000-year old people, while many others haven’t. I am a journalist so now I write the news of the day, rather than about the deeds of the olden days. I cover the country’s current leaders and their meaningless power struggles, their lack of vision and, often, of principles. It becomes obvious every day they don’t seem to care at all about their people, they are eager to sell this country’s land, forests and resources. For their own personal gain, they want to sell the very things for which our forefathers have shed their blood. It’s easy to become cynical and it becomes harder and harder to answer one simple question: “Why are we proud to be Romanians?” And are we? And then there are these amazing people, maybe one or two in a generation, who manage to help us forget for a while about our corrupt leaders and about the challenge to live in Romania. They remind us why we are proud to be Romanians: take the rower Ivan Patzaichin, gymnast Nadia Comaneci, tennis player Ilie Nastase or footballer Gheorghe Hagi. During hard times for this country, they managed to make us proud of who we are. Much like their ancestors, they defied the odds and won, making it to the world’s hall of fame and taking Romania’s name there with them. And now we have Simona Halep, the 23-year old tennis player who took the whole world by surprise this year with her performance. Her rise was spectacular: a victory in Quatar, the final in Madrid, then the Roland Garros final, followed by the Wimbledon semifinal. And then, almost as if out of nowhere, she was number two in the world. Amazing! Then came a decline. All the efforts of a full season took their toll on the young Halep: the poor performance in the US Open, an injury in Beijing, and down to number four. It seemed that this was it for her. But then came the WTA Finals, the ultimate tournament of the tennis season, bringing together the current eight best tennis players in the world. It can’t get any tougher than this. Halep went into the tournament confident and with nothing to lose. It is her first WTA Finals tournament, her dream. Probably no one would have expected her to win. Not even her greatest fans in Romania. No one outside Romania seems to ever expect to see a Romanian become number one. It’s easy to imagine an American winning, because this is what they do, they rule half of the world, and have been winning for the last one hundred years; they produce champions. Take number one tennis player Serena Williams, for example: I don’t think anyone is surprised to see her winning and on the first place. It’s not that hard to see a Russian winning either. They are a large country, a great nation and have a glorious past. This is why Maria Sharapova’s success seems kind of obvious. But to see a Romanian winning, now that is something odd for many. And yet, Simona Halep managed to get past that and made it to the final in Singapore. She entered the tennis court focused and determined to win, committed to play her best tennis. Little did it matter that she was facing the best in the world: she knew that victory was not impossible for her, that she could get it is she played well. And she did. She first beat young Canadian Eugenie Bouchard and then she managed to produce the biggest surprise of the tournament by beating the world’s number one, Serena Williams. And when you look at Serena, when you see her past results, it’s not hard to see why she’s number one. She is a great player, she is used to winning, it’s in her blood. Halep may not have winning in her blood. After all, she is of a nation that’s always been the underdog. But she has something just as valuable: she loves the game and she is determined to overcome her limits, to always become better at what she does. This is something that all our great champions have in common. Nastase, Comaneci, Hagi, they all had this disadvantage of coming from a poor country, without the best conditions to train for performance. But they loved what they did, and they had the determination to prove that even a Romanian can be number one if he sets his mind to it. Simona Halep may beat Serena Williams on Sunday and win the tournament, or she may not. After all, beating her once was a great surprise, beating her twice in a week seems something of a miracle. But only the fact that she managed to overcome the health problems she had in the last few months, to regain her game and her determination, and be great on the court, shows that she is of great champion material. And no doubt she will be one. We can only thank her for reminding us why we are proud to be Romanians and wish her good health and good luck! ---