The president of the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee (COSR), Mihai Covaliu, said on Thursday that the institution he leads will not give up until it exhausts all ways to obtain a wild-card for tennis player Simona Halep to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris.

“There is this chance for Simona. And I can say that until we exhaust all these ways to get a wild-card for Simona, we will not give up. The most important thing is that Simona wants this with all her heart. She has time to reach her former form. It depends only on her and how much she wants to participate in Paris. We are waiting for her. My message is to be healthy, to have confidence and every day to climb another step to fulfill her Olympic dream,” Covaliu explained.

Simona Halep, whose 4-year doping suspension was reduced to 9 months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, has returned to the WTA circuit, but her ranking position of 1,144 does not allow her to participate in the Olympic Games.

Covaliu hopes that the number of athletes qualified for the Paris Olympics will eventually approach 100.
“There are still 32 Romanian athletes who have chances to qualify for the Paris Games. We can’t bet on a number of medals, because we all know what the tension at the Olympics means. We want as many as possible. We want every athlete who has chances to succeed in materializing them by winning a medal of any color. It is extremely difficult, because sport lately has grown a lot. That’s why it’s very hard to say in advance that you’re going to win a certain number of gold, silver or bronze medals,” he said.