This year’s edition of Sports Festival introduced 22 sports for initiation – aikido, basketball, cross-training, kayaking, darts, climbing, fitness, football, yoga/pilates, gymnastics, handball, kyokushin, mountain biking, rugby, roundnet, skiing, fencing, teqball, skiing, tennis, table tennis, and volleyball. Participants also received a sports passport, a map that helped them navigate the festival space and collect “visas” for each sport. The demand for passports was so high that a new batch had to be printed after the second day of the festival. Participants – mostly children but also playful adults – fully embraced the experience, eagerly waiting for their turn at each sport and celebrating every time they managed to score a basket in basketball, hit the ball correctly with a racket in tennis, or strike it powerfully with their foot or head in football or teqball.
Some sports required stepping out of one’s comfort zone – most notably climbing or kayaking – so trust in the instructors was essential. But it’s not every day that you get to share a boat with a national champion, as was the case in kayaking, where Patrick Kozma (17 years old, from Satu Mare), a champion in kayak slalom, was one of the instructors ensuring the boats glided safely on Chios Lake.
Sports like fencing, which isn’t easily accessible everywhere, were a big hit, as were football and tennis, traditionally the stars of Sports Festival, featuring special events like the retirement matches organized for Adi Mutu in football and Horia Tecău in tennis. “It looks so easy on TV. I had no idea how difficult it actually is to use the racket and give the ball the right direction,” said Alina (43 years old), who tried tennis for the first time in her life.
Some participants even traveled to Cluj specifically for Sports Festival. “We’re from Bistrița, but we wanted to give our kids the chance to see a tennis match with Simona Halep and Horia Tecău, so we came to Cluj for two days. Now we’re moving from one area to another, trying different sports and collecting visas,” said Marius Matei, as he waited for his children, Eliza (7 years old) and Sebastian (11 years old), to come down from the climbing wall.
By the end of the festival, over 13,000 children and adults had taken advantage of Sports Festival’s offerings and tested their sports skills. Those who collected all the visas on their sports passport were surprised with a reward of their choice at the end. And there were plenty of options over the four days of the festival: medals, buffs, pins, frisbees, stress balls… and the list goes on. The goal is for them to always remember the moments lived at Romania’s most beautiful celebration of sports.
