#RomaniaPremianta First visually-impaired judoka in Romania international medallist, stand-out student at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj

The first visually-impaired judoka in Romania, Alexandru Bologa, who won the bronze medal at the Rio de Janeiro Paralympic Games in the autumn of 2016, and last year's gold medal at the European Championships for visually-impaired, is at the same time a student at Special Psychopedagogy at the Faculty of Psychology and Education of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj.

Alexandru is a member of the University CSM Cluj-Napoca Club and is in a moment of full sporting ascension, aiming at the gold medal in the next year's world championships but, at the same time, he wants to use his tatami experience to promote sport among people with disabilities because he thinks he can understand them better than other people.

He chose to study psychology precisely because of the emotions he had before the competitions, and the years spent in the faculty gave him new ideas.

"When I got to the stage of graduation and I had to choose what to do next after the Baccalaureate, I thought .... because during my matches I was very nervous and I often did not manage to master my emotions ... I thought about how to turn them into constructive emotions. I chose to study at the psychology faculty specializing in special psychopedagogy, because I thought that after I finish I will understand more," says the young judoka.

Maybe because of the success he has had, but also of the luck to have met coaches who had the patience to support him in his sporting life, Alex is fighting not only in competitions but also in society to make people understand that sport and disabilities are not always incompatible.

His coach, Tamas Gergely, thinks he has discovered the secret of his young judoka, which may be due to his special condition.

"I'm fascinated by the idea of working with him, I do it out of pleasure, and I have no other benefit than feeling very, very good. He learns very quickly. If we learn a new technique, he has the ability to learn it so well, he makes his movements mentally in such a way that in the next training session you say that he has known that technique for two or three years," says the coach.

After the Paralympic Games in Rio (Brazil) in 2016 and the European Visually-Impaired Seniors Championships in Walsall (United Kingdom), the echo of Alex's results has made the number of people with disabilities to try a sport to grow.

For the future, Alex has well-established goals: a medal at the World Championships next year, becoming a champion in his category in 2019 and in 2010 a new medal at the Olympics.AGERPRES(RO - author: Elena Stanciu, editor: Marius Fratila; EN - author: Bogdan Gabaroi; editor: Maria Voican)