AGERPRES special correspondent, Adrian Tone, reports: Rower’s palms are like footballer’s feet. Everyone knows that the beauty of performance is inversely proportional to the appearance of the parts of the body which you “pull” with. Body mutilation is the most visible of the sacrifices made by athletes.

If footballers have their toes like branches, tormented by the boots that give, when the mind and body help you, the charm of a dribble or the effect of a shot, the rowers have their palms like a vise, with sandpaper inside.

Being impressed by the speech of one of the two Olympic rowing champions, Marian Florian Enache, who won the gold medal in the men’s double sculls, together with Andrei Cornea, I congratulate him in a moment of respite.

“Hello, I am from AGERPRES, I don’t want anything from you, I would just like to congratulate you for the speech and the message you have sent,” I said to Marian, whom my colleagues and friends call Florin, at the House of Romania, organized during the Olympic Games in Paris at, probably, the most beautiful embassy we have abroad.

The almost two-meter man, sure of himself, very determined, calculated, transmits sincerity through everything he says, formulates the sentences coherently, has the words with him.

“Thank you, I appreciate it very much, it means a lot to me,” he says gallantly and shakes my hand.

Champion’s palms are still human palms, only my hand is completely lost and looks like that of a helpless child, who only now feels the vicissitudes of life.

“I walked with them three intersections from where the car left us. You won’t believe it. They had medals around their necks and all the people on the terraces, when they saw them, stood up and applauded them,” says the secretary general of the Romanian Rowing Federation, Sandu Pop, one of the people in the shadows who work on the performance of Romanian sport.

“If this is no longer called an Olympic reward, then I don’t know what someone like Enache could ‘pull’ for. People you don’t know, who don’t know you, who drink a coffee on a terrace in the middle of Paris stand up and applaud your effort, your passion, your value. Eh, voila!”

After ten minutes I realized that I could only think of the palm that had squeezed my hand as in a vise. I already had the impertinence of a tabloid journalist and I asked Enache to let me photograph his palms.

“Why are you all filming their palms?! Don’t you find it normal that after so long they have calluses?! You’d better shoot the Olympic circles on his arm, look at him, he’s sculpted,” scolds me friendly Elisabeta Lipa, the mother of the rowers and the coordinator of the entire Romanian sport as president of the ANS (National Agency for Sports, ed. n.). I understand her, when you have 5 medals of the colour and value of the one won on Thursday by Enache, you are no longer impressed by some calluses, but we ordinary mortals, want to see the canons by which glory is achieved.

Especially if it’s about someone else.

And yes, Marian Enache is, indeed, sculpted. He lifts the sleeve of his shirt with the hand in which he has the medal and reveals the gold factory.

“During the competition there were some signs that gave us confidence, lane one, the fact that they put us there, where we won at the European Championships as well. But we didn’t come up with the thought that we were the best,” says his boatmate, Andrei Cornea.

Before the race, Marian Enache said: “What made the difference were the training, the experience and the mentality with which we approached this race today. I have never had an easy race, because I am never satisfied with the result, if I have no one to confirm it with. For us, that was the goal, to be in the final. We will see each other again in the mixed zone, and maybe instead of this accreditation it will be a medal.”

A kind of “I could have beaten you, but you were lucky that I wasn’t interested in the result and I didn’t take you seriously”.

The story of the boys in the men’s double rowing boat is not told by their palms. Elisabeta Lipa is right, if you pull with your hands it’s normal to have calluses, if you pull with your feet, it’s natural to have them mutilated. But when the palms are helped by an iron psychic, like Enache has, the athletes receive not only the gold medal, but also the gratitude of millions of other pairs who unite in applause. Their most valuable reward.