Starting with the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, which saw then 14-year-old Nadia Comăneci book her place in the history of sport with the first perfect 10 ever recorded, gymnastics became a national craze in Romania, where thousands of young girls, as little as 3, would flock the Deva training complex in Transylvania, in a bid to become "the new Nadia". Following the Romanian Revolution in 1989, gymnastics remained at the fore of sport in a society marred by corruption and poverty, acting as a unique springboard to stardom for disadvantaged youth from all over the country, second only to football prestige-wise. However, after peaking in the early 2000s, Romanian gymnastics eventually dwindled. We argue that this reverse in the history of the sport in Romania and its sharp drop in youth appeal come down not only to falling standards or the steady "bankruptcy" of the Communist-inherited sports system, but also to a change in mentality and the emergence of a new socio-economic class which embraced tennis as a positional good. Interest in the sport is today at an all time high thanks to the exploits of Simona Halep in particular, making tennis the new "youth fountain" of Romania.

This sports media research uses a single case study approach to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mediatic consumption of sports heroes. The case of airing the “3mm” documentary film about WTA tennis player Simona Halep on Romanian television is being analyzed. The theoretical framework is set around the concept of parasocial interaction specific for the mediated relationships between sports fans and their favorite sports brands. The research question asks about the factors induced by the COVID-19 pandemic that might have influenced the rather low audiences of the broadcasted documentary. Results show that, indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic might have well had a considerable impact upon audience figures, mainly because, due to the pandemic situation, the patterns of parasocial interaction between sports fans and sports brands have been altered. The paper discusses the changes in parasocial interaction which occurred due to the pandemic.

The present article aims to highlight the ways in which the sports hero in Romania is "annexed", ie used and instrumentalized by the political power, represented by public institutions, political parties and / or politicians. The case study analyzes the ceremonies and awards bestowed upon the tennis player Simona Halep, the most prominent sports figure of Romania in the past decade, by a number of local authorities in the country (Buşteni, Constanţa, Călăraşi, Bucharest, Cluj) and by the Romanian Presidency, from late 2013 to the present day. We scrutinize the reasons behind such feats of public homage and the media coverage it entailed, while also trying to explain why sport, and tennis in particular, is courted assiduously by politicians in the countryand what this reveals about the standing of the sports hero in Romanian society and political legitimization strategies. We also explore the reasons why apparently similar political strategies of gaining political kudos through association with a sport hero work brilliantly for one Romanian politician and dramatically backfire for another. Last but not least, we take a look at the way the sports hero was instrumentalized during the COVID-19 pandemic.