“The perseverance of the athletes, the courage, the rigor, the ambition pursued step by step, especially the fair play and the camaraderie would be good.

At the same time, Mircea also runs the magazine from Oradea Familia (E Bihorean Mr. Pricăjan). The title is one of the most prestigious in our cultural world. The family is the magazine in which the young Mihai Eminescu was noted in the 19th century.

His links with sport are complex and start with contact sports. Let's see.

Mircea Pricăjan and the links with the world of sport: “First Judokan, then Karateka”

– Mircea Pricăjan, writer. I see in you the spirit of a karateka and a judokan. You practiced, right?
– You sensed well. First Judokan and then Karateka. If you can say this about someone crazy at an early age of films with beats, a kid who wanted to imitate his celluloid idols. They were the first 1990s, I finally had unlimited access to the show of some Bruce Lee, JCVD, Dolph Lundgren, Jackie Chan and all of them. Plus Arnold Schwarzenegger, the iron man. So yes, I went to Judo first, I wanted to learn to fall. It didn't come to me; I wanted, in fact, to learn to fight.

I then changed the karate, but I did too little contact, too much kumite. And I also broke my hand trying to hit Van Damme's twisting on the field. I thought, however, not to give up so easily. It was a shame, if I kept knowing.

– Mircea Pricăjan, writer

“I started Greek-Roman fights. But it seemed like a too intimate increase, I also abandoned it. A while, at the beginning of adolescence, inspired by Arnold, I practiced bodybuilding. Without a practical method, although theoretically I was in the good direction-I had a subscription to the Bodybuilding Magazine.

I really remember sold the boxing gloves (I had them from my parents, to fight my sister properly, because I didn't try it) and bought tickets to the bodybuilding Balkan. He kept in Oradea sometime in '95 -'96, if they do not wrong. My sister and I was holding Florin Uceanu, I knew him from the magazine, I had bought and read his book, performance bodybuilding (Redis Club Publishing House, Bucharest, 1994, 122 pages).

Then I gave my books, entered my reading and I gave up any sports career. I clarified that the only room I can stay with the hours is the reading room. This is, ”confessed the writer during the interview given to the Sports Gazette.

Mircea Pricăjan, in teens // Photo: Personal Archive

“Bruce Lee. Always”

– That being said, one of the great questions of the transition remains in force: Bruce Lee beats Van Damme? And if so, why?
– Bruce Lee. Always. Bruce Lee knows the job, has a karate school, not ballet, like van Damme. Bruce Lee is only fiber and does not pose in Gigolo, he is not interested in fainting the girls behind him. Van Damme was envious; Bruce Lee admired him.

– Nowadays, what relationships with sports, Mircea? What example do you give to your son and our young generation?
– I am a model parent about it. I know how to encourage sports in young people. I have speech, I know theory. Mihai, my son, I gave him karate-he reached the yellow belt. I gave him basketball, football, TIR. He has done and still does polo, swimming very well, feels like fish in water. This year he had a short episode to throw with the spear, trained at the break of the fair and represented the school, along with his colleagues, at an athletics competition in Italy. He threw 32 meters, others threw longer. But that doesn't matter; It matters to participate, right?

– Sure.
– I always told him that performance requires many sacrifices, it is painful, that joy can be great if you win, and the despair even greater if you lose. I always told him that we do not follow the performance with all the sports we give. If it is, good; But it's not mandatory. I do not want (necessarily) to be David Popovici. I didn't give it to tennis.

– Where do you think sport and art intersect, and literature? What could write the writers from athletes and vice versa?
– We have a lot to learn from athletes. They from us less. We would take their perseverance well, the courage, the rigor, the ambition pursued step by step, especially the fair play and the camaraderie. We are more scattered, so, more … artists. And we complain too often. From the athletes we could learn to be more Spartan, to know how to grit their teeth. Now that I think better, I really don't know what they could learn from us.

– You are also a translator from English, with numerous volumes on the asset. The biography of which a great sportsman would you translate with the translation of Bruce Springsteen's biography?
– I don't have a favorite athlete. As we sing, for example. Springsteen and Ozzy, for example, which I have translated so far. But for the correct amount I would translate the biography of anyone. Passion is only part of the translator's job.

“I am not interested in football. I would have been more happy to see a movie with beatings or a predator”

– What did Hagi's generation mean to your generation and how did you live in the 1990s? How was the golden generation from Bihor County?
– I only watched a few matches then, I don't even know exactly. I saw them in the country, I remember my grandparents, and only because I was little and I was not allowed to leave the house in the dark, and in the house all the neighbors on the street were gathered. There were still few TVs in the village in those years. I, one, was not very careful. I'm not interested in football. I would have been happy to see a movie with beatings or predator. But yes, I know what Hagi meant for the rest of my generation and for Bihor County, as well as for the rest of the country. Unfortunately, everything passed by me without touching me. My loss.

– When were you the last time on the stadium and what stories did you return home?
– I have never been to the stadium. If the question concerns the sport with the round ball … Otherwise, at concerts, Ehe, there is another story. Metallica in 2019, before pandemic, on the National Arena. What a show!

“I am irrecoverable writer”

– What are your favorites among our last year champions? Halep? Popovici?
– Yes and yes. Halep and Popovici. I heard them in the news, I saw … Cross from their evolutions, I enjoyed them for their performance. I enjoyed especially for them, individually, on a natural person; I have never lived the thrill of their victory at my personal level, as it is done. It seems to me a gesture of kidnapping to shout in front of the TV “I won!”, When your merit is just that of dividing, by chance, the same language with the winner. But maybe that's my loss.

– How, Mircea, you don't play chess?
– Game, but stupid. When they leave the networks – and this happens a month, two – chess game on the phone. Because the reflex to take the phone in hand periodically remains, I have nothing to do. Playing at the beginner level so that I have a chance to beat the car. Otherwise it has no fun. Aggressive game and not calculated, I like to surprise myself with unexpected moves, I like to capture pieces that I discover vulnerable, ready to capture, in the case of the algorithm set to be inattentive. I have no sports, I think it has already understood. I am irrecoverable writer.