Leon Rotman

Life and sporting career

Rotman is Jewish, and was born to a working-class Jewish family, he took up several sports in the years immediately after World War II and was fascinated by canoeing after seeing the famous Czech champions Jan Brzak-Felix and Bohumil Kudrna compete on Lake Snagov near Bucharest in 1953. He joined the Dinamo Bucharest sports club, in the hope of getting one of the Czech-made canoes left by the two in Romania. He didn't, but he was remarked by famous coach Radu Hutan after becoming national champion in improvised canoes.

He would eventually compete at the Olympics on the first canoe ever made in Romania (at the factories in Reghin, Mures County). At the 1956 Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, despite competing with a sprained ankle, Rotman won both the C-1 10000 m and the C-1 1000 m events, equaling Swede Gert Fredriksson's performance who, at the same Olympics, won gold in both individual kayak events. He was the first Romanian to win two medals in one Olympic Games. He went on to win bronze at the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome in the C-1 1000m event. He was slightly less successful in other competitions (fifth in the 1957 and 1961 European Championships in C-1 1000 m, and seventh at the 1963 World Championships in C-1 10000 m).

He won however the Snagov Regatta seven times and six international regattas outside Romania. He won 14 national titles before his 1963 retirement.