Greco-Roman wrestling competition organized in honor of masters Vasile Bancea and Florea Teodor. Vasile Bancea is the journalist who revived the fighting in Bistrita – ProPolitica

The training hall of the Greco-Roman wrestling section of Gloria 2018 hosted this afternoon a unique competition organized by a senior of Greco-Roman wrestling, Bogdan Șolderea.

The thought, now said, was a competition organized to honor the continuers and masters of Greco-Roman wrestling after December 1989, those who carried the flame of this sport unquenched further with all the difficulties inherent in the post-revolutionary period: Vasile Bancea and Florea Teodor .

“All those who practice this sport and come to the gym, must know who their ancestors are, and Vasile Bancea and Florea Teodor, are important characters in the continuation of Greco-Roman battles in Bistrița-Năsăud county”, Bogdan Șolderea told us.

And, as in any competition there are winners and losers, here are the rankings of this unique competition:

U17- 1. Courtesan Adrian

2. Nicoara Cristian

3. Andrei Muresan

3. Rus Raul

U15 – 1. Bela Patrick

2. Courtesan Gheorghe

3. Marginean Dragos

U13/1- 1. Lazar Andreeas

2. Bozesan Robert

3. Champion Raul

U13/2- 1. Szas Alberto

2. Panca Patrick

3. Black Matthew

3. Stoiciuc Bogdan

In the U8 category, the gold medals were won by the little fighters: Aruncutean Elias, Șolderea David, Mate Alexandru, Seni Adrian and Onofrei Ionut. Club president Florea Bogdan came to support the event, together with Belei Cristian and Cojoc Grig! More than 20 athletes accompanied by their parents participated in the competition!

The Greco-Roman battles were revived in Bistrita by a journalist

CLUB HERCULES was founded in 2010 by Vasile Bancea and Florea Teodor, members of the Bistritan wrestling team in Division A with representation abroad and high-level results. It should not be forgotten that, after, before 1989, the Greco-Roman fights were considered traditional in Bistrita, they disappeared for two decades from the county.

In March 2010, Vasile Bancea, a sports journalist, former fighter, opened his own training hall. Now, three groups of children and young people, aged between 6 and 19, train under the supervision of Bancea and a former colleague of his, Teodor Florea. “No taxes are paid. Basically, those who come can pay a monthly fee of 50 lei, but only if they want to”, explains Vasile Bancea.

What I wrote in 2010 in the sports press of the time: When you say Greco-Roman wrestling, you think of a huge hall in which men the size of Fiji mountain and anointed with all kinds of oils on their bodies break, tighten, throw themselves on each other in a life-and-death struggle. I must say that what I saw in the space where the “Hercules” Sports Club exists and operates has completely changed my image of this sport, which is also said to be the anteroom of wrestling.

The location where we met with Vasile Bancea, the only Greco-Roman wrestling trainer in Bistrita-Nasaud county, is a very coquettish space. A training room with many strength machines and many, many mirrors, and on a mattress as special as possible, several children “play” learning procedures. There are about 10. Some do physical training, as serious as possible, others fight technique. “What did you expect?” asked Vasile Bancea, known for his extremely developed sense of humor, “look, you see, there are neither muscular men with thick necks, nor bloody fights, nothing from the Bau-Bau stories. Here we do sports, a tough one, but we do sports, we don’t stick our noses in computers on XXX sites: You know, we started with two children. Fixed two children. After that came another one, another one, and so on. Now we are 30, and although it seems like we were playing, here things are as serious as possible. It was and still is difficult to convince parents that they can bring their children to the gym without something happening to them, for sure, apart from muscle fever”, Bancea tells me.

When I ask him about wrestling, he laughs sheepishly but understands that it’s a question of color: “It’s a huge stupidity, a stupidity that you can only hear in Romania. Wrestling is an Olympic sport, as old as the world. What makes me happy is the fact that more and more boys and girls come to the gym, forgetting about football. You know, when I go to schools, there are classes where out of 30 children, 25 want to play football. What we offer is something else”, says Bancea.

Who is Vasile Bancea???

He spent his childhood in Lunca Ilvei, and at the age of 14 he came to Bistrita, to high school. As all the children were doing something extracurricular, usually exercise, the boy thought of playing sports as well. “I really liked the sound of judo.

I wanted to focus on this branch”, says Vasile, who didn’t settle well in the city, so he went to Gloria to look for a judo coach. Arriving there, he confused the halls and entered the place where Greco-Roman battles were fought. “I made the wrong room and I stayed there. I liked them very much and I fought at Gloria, then at Viitorul CPL Bistrita until the age of 25”, says the athlete.

Vasile Bancea had important achievements in his sportsman’s life, even if the financial part was not the strong point of the Greco-Roman wrestling section. “We were not a top club because there were problems with money, but we always caused problems for those in the country. We were professionals, taken out of production, we did two trainings a day”, says the athlete, who in division A of wrestling beat national champions and European junior vice-champions.

Germany, print media vs Spain

Two years after the Revolution of December 1989, Vasile Bancea chose to go to Germany, to work, but he managed to combine the useful with the pleasant. Thus, after giving tests at a wrestling club, he stayed here for two years. In 1997 he returned to the country and entered the sports press. After ten years in the press, during which he put his shoulder to the construction of the only sports weekly from Bistrita-Nasaud “Sportul Bistritan”, Bancea chooses, once again, the road of bones, that is, the road of foreigners. He went to work in Spain, but his thoughts remained on the Greco-Roman battles. And, as in any other work you have time for yourself, of course, this is not valid in the case of the media, the Bank had time to meditate on how it will succeed in reviving this ancient sport. He started with a group of children, but without a club, i.e. a legal basis, things could get complicated, so he did another tour of Spain. In 2009, Vasile Bancea drew up a project and, together with another sports lover, Teodor Florea, built the foundation of the “Hercules” Sports Club. Florea is the president of the club and takes care of the financial side, and Bancea is the coach.

.In October 2022, Club HERCULES became the wrestling section of CS Gloria 2018 Bistrita-Năsăud.