“Don't pressure me! David is my idol, but also my friend. We enjoy the doubles”

In a dialogue with the athlete who recently transferred from Olimpia to Dinamo, GSP.ro tried to find out what it is like for him to be contemporary with the best Romanian swimmer of all time and one of the greatest in the world. Does such competition crush you, does it motivate you?

Denis didn't even blink: “He doesn't pressure me in any way, he actually makes me want to be even better! Because, first of all, we are also very good friends. And, I don't mince words, he is an idol for me. But I don't look at him like everyone else does, because I grew up with him, I grew up with him, we grew up together.

I'm glad to be contemporary with him, let's live everything together, somehow double. I experience his joys, and so does he experience mine. Maybe it's hard to believe, but it's true, I'm not saying it out of complacency! And he did not change with success. He remained the same David that I have always known, first of all my friend, always ready to help you, to encourage you”.

Denis Popescu: “I won a bet with David in 2025!”

European U23 champion in 100m butterfly, Denis remembers that “Our first meeting took place in 2018, in a training camp in Turkey. I was swimming at Reșita, David at the Navy club in Bucharest, as far as I remember.

From then on he impressed, that he was smaller than us and kept beating us. I competed against him many times, in those years, because he was also doing backstroke and butterfly events. I have also won before, but less often.

Our relationship has grown even stronger since 2019 when we were roommates in Azerbaijan at FOTE. And since then we are very good friends”.

Now, the two will be colleagues at the club as well, not just at the national team. Because after 4 years, Denis decided to transfer to Dinamo, where David Popovici is also registered. He decided to leave because “there were already some problems at Olimpia. I still have 6 outstanding salaries to collect. And I thought it was time to take a step forward.

Naturally he will help me, now I will prepare with David and this is really a challenge. Last year we made a bet. Who will be the first to do the 100 butterfly in an official competition under 52 seconds. That he still swims sometimes and tries this. And I won, when I took the European U23 title and I swam 51.4 in both the semi-finals and the final, which is also the national record.

But at the senior Worlds at the end of 2025, where only David and I participated, with the winning time from the European U23 I was only 17th. I mean I still have a lot of work to do! But that is to be David's friend and contemporary. To have such challenges!

Because we have stayed with this since we were little, we still compete, we challenge each other. I give him my races, I ask him for his opinion, I ask him where I still have to correct on the technical side. Because the technique is the most important. It helps you enormously: the better your technique, the easier and faster you move in the water.”

Denis Popescu: “I couldn't stand not knowing what others know”

Denis remembers more from his mother's stories about how he got into swimming: “I liked the water as a child. And when I was in kindergarten, I couldn't stand that I didn't know what other children knew, even the older ones. That's how I found out that some of them already knew how to swim.

I was in the small group, I was 3 years old, they were in bigger groups. But that didn't matter to me, I wanted to be able to do what they were doing. From then on, that's it!, I told my mother that I wanted to learn too. I disappointed her, so she had no choice and took me to a club in Reșita. I enjoyed it and kept swimming.

And in the first grade, where I had Yvone Demenyi as a teacher, who is still swimming in the master's trials (over 50 years old), the coaches saw that I moved quite well in the water and decided to take me to the performance group”.

“He's going to help me train with David!”

From tomorrow, Denis and David will resume training for the big competitions in 2026, in the Dinamo pool. The athlete from Resisi says that “2025 was the best so far, but it's already passed. And in 2026, of course, I want to be better.

Maybe I'll try to do the 50 meter freestyle more often. I'm quite competitive, I have close times with David's in this race. In the 100 meters free it's harder, because my time is light years away from his. At the Nationals at the end of 2025, I also participated in these two trials if he still wasn't there.

I came out champion in the percentage and finished 3 out of 50. But this year, 2026, I will focus mainly on the butterfly events, where I had the best results”.

In August, the European Championships in Paris follow, another challenge for Denis, who will have to raise his level for the senior competitions. But he is convinced that “now it will be even better, after I moved, together with my coach, Bogdan Stroe, to Dinamo.

We will work together with David and his coach, we will be a team. It's really a pleasure to do this with David! Because, even if it's still there, the big dream is the Olympics. I was so close in Paris in 2024, but I missed only 20 hundredths”.

Besides the passion for swimming, Denis and David share one more, that of cars. If Popovici got a Porsche Spyder after the Paris Olympics, David drives an Audi A6, “which I wanted for a long time and, now that I've fulfilled my wish, I'm not even thinking of changing it.”

Denis is a student at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, studying German and English. He studied the first since kindergarten, as his mother tongue, and now also has the C1 degree at the Goethe Institute.

After I won the European U23 title, I was talking to David and he told me that success is contagious, that from now on I will want to win even more. I hope to achieve this in the future!
Denis Popescu, European U23 champion