Romanian swimmer David Popovici named male swimmer of 2022

Romanian star swimmer David Popovici was named male swimmer of the year 2022 before the start of the Swimming World Championship in Fukuoka, Japan.

On Monday morning, July 24, Popovici qualified for the semifinals of the 200m freestyle event at the Fukuoka World Swimming Championship. He swam the four pool lengths with a time of 1:45.86, the third-best time in the heats.

David Popovici, 18, recently gave an interview to the Swimming and Modern Pentathlon Federation during which he talked about the pressure he faced before the start of the championships.

"I believe the world will try to put pressure on me. It's up to me whether I accept it or not and what I think about this pressure. What I can control is the pressure I put on myself, which will be at low levels. Certainly, my desire is to have [a new rival] who is even better than me or comes close to me. And to be able to compete against each other because if you don't have competition, you don't feel good when you win. We try not to focus too much on competitors, but when I was starting out, I used to study them because there was a lot to learn from them. And now I study them, but we focus more on my race,” the swimmer said, cited by HotNews.

At the European Championship in Rome last year, Popovici set a new junior world record of 1:42.97 in the 200m race. He became the third-fastest swimmer in history in this distance, following Germany's Paul Biedermann (1:42.00) and the American legend Michael Phelps (1:42.96).

(Photo source: Dinamo Bucuresti Official on Twitter)