Transcription

• Speaker #0

  When I have you in front of me, a living legend, my first temptation is to ask you about the past. But I would like to ask you about the future. When you look at Romania today, where do you see untapped potential still?

• Speaker #1

  How do you look at Romania today? You look economically, you look politically, you look as a member of the European Union, not European United States. States, not United States of Europe. It's a very difficult European Union, the United States of America or United States of Europe. We are 28 countries with different languages, with different religions, with different people. So it's not going to be ever, I think, or we need to do 300 years to become United States of Europe. Looking at Romania, it's one of the most important countries of the European Union. It's the border. Look at the situation today. We have 600 kilometers, more or less, border with Ukraine. We are very close to Russia. Not that I'm afraid of Russia or anything. I have completely different opinions. The Russians are not a danger for Europe or for us because they don't have to do anything with Europe. Russia is a continent that's very rich and Europe is the poorest continent from all of them. We don't export any more technology, we don't export any more arts and other things. Those things are gone. All those things you buy on the internet today, coming back to Romania, we are also at the border of the Black Sea. And I think that we made big mistakes, we, Romanians, or our leaders, in the last 30 years. For 25 years that we are part of the European Union, to make Brussels understand the importance of Romania. We are always very silent and very obedient and very... fraternity, to put it that way. But I think that Romania didn't reach its potential and... Sooner or later, Brussels is going to understand that if we, the Romanian, cannot do exactly what is expected from us or something like that, they have to do it in our place, because that's exactly what will do a union. But that is Romania today. I hope that we have great potential.

• Speaker #0

  Difficult situation, but great potential. And yet, in this environment, we have to build. You built something that we are inside of right now. What is your competitive advantage when you build something? What is your, let's say, foremost quality in building something?

• Speaker #1

  Listen, I have the benefit of living in two worlds. In the communist world that I was born in, in Brasov, in Romania, and living outside Romania because of my job as a tennis player, mainly not as a hockey player. So I saw the good and the bad on both situations. None of these two situations are perfect, or the perfection doesn't exist in this world. So coming back to that, I think that the priorities in particular, when I'm coming from sports, have changed drastically in Romania since 1990. Sport was completely forgotten. That was one of the first priorities of the communist regimes. And that was a huge mistake, a huge mistake. Sport is health, sport is education, sport is future, anything that you like to be. So coming back, what you do building in Romania, you have to understand which Romania we are talking about. Talking about a country that in 1939 was in the top four or five countries of Europe. Everybody recognized that. For us, those 30, 40, 50 years of communism pulled us back a lot. And we are suffering even today. But it's our fault. Not only fault of the Brussels and so on and so forth. It's our fault because we have not had the courage to stand up. Because not everything is perfect, as I said before. And today in the European Union, are countries of four different dimensions. If you take Germany, France, ex-England that was there and so on and so on. Then comes Italy, Spain, the Nordic countries and so on and so on. Then comes the ones that emerged with us, like Poland and Croatia, that are more advanced. Then you have Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia that is not yet in, and I don't know why, and so on and so on.

• Speaker #0

  The Balkan countries.

• Speaker #1

  And that's what it is, the situation today. Building today in Romania, starting with a building, finishing with a school, finishing with universities and so on. Romania is a very talented nation, from A to Z. Look at sports, Nadia Comaneci doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. And Anastasia or Halep, even in a sport that is completely... Completely at random in Romania is not a basic sport because we don't have 500,000 tennis players or something like that. Probably we have about 50,000 or not more than that. And still we have three finals of the Davis Cup, we have a winner of Wimbledon, winner of French Open, US Open and so on. We have a very talented people in Romania, but the basics we don't have it because we don't have... we didn't seed and you don't seed you cannot harvest.

• Speaker #0

  Nothing will grow.

• Speaker #1

  It's as simple as that. So saying that we are very happy. We hope for the best and we don't want to cry because we don't have anything about to cry but we can do better in the future.

• Speaker #0

  You mentioned that sport is largely forgotten in Romania. We have figures like David Popovic who succeeded against all odds like Nadia Komaneci and all others. But yet, sport...

• Speaker #1

  You're talking again about another exception.

• Speaker #0

  Yes.

• Speaker #1

  You know, exception like Popovich and so on and so on, it does exist. It does exist. And it's going to be in the future as well. But a country, the whole country doesn't live only on exceptions. You have to have the basics. I'm not comparing myself with China. You know when Raducanu three years ago won the US Open, because she's half Chinese, half Romanian, she had a perfect Mandarin in an interview on the Monday after from New York. In China there were 400 million people looking and hearing what she's going to say. So the next day there were another 10 million little girls starting playing tennis. So it's automatically normal that in 10 years from those 10 million that it is, is going to be left only 300,000, 200,000. But look what happened with China because they have 10 girls in the top 100. Why? Because 25 years ago, Na Li, a Chinese, won the French Open. It was enough. For them to say, look, this sport is bad on top of everything in China, it's a very, very sportive nation, like Italy in Europe or Germany.

• Speaker #0

  They plant a lot of seeds, you can say. But you mentioned that sport is forgotten in Romania, but it is not forgotten here in the club. What was your vision behind building the club, if you can talk about that?

• Speaker #1

  If you're talking about Stejari...

• Speaker #0

  Yes.

• Speaker #1

  When you're talking about this club, unfortunately this club was not built for sports. I do my sports, if you go to Otopeni, you see the ice hockey rink that I made, the Olympic swimming pool is going to be ready in 30 days, 40 days, they are working for two years now for that. The Nadia Comaneci Hall that we celebrate this year, 50 years since the perfect woman was born. In Montreal at the Olympics with that perfect 10, that was the first 10 ever to be in any sports. And we celebrate that and I make him a tennis hole just for children. And I'm looking only at children from 3-year-old, 2-year-old until 12-year-old. Because a 12-year-old, if a child did 5 years of that sport, 6 years, 7 years. Then he is dedicated and at that time he has to go forward to go to a junior team somewhere or to do something that is going to continue his sport career. But sitting there and every year for example in ice hockey there are coming 300 new little children 3 to 4 to 5 year old. Of course in the year after. From these are left only 30, 40, 50, but another 300 are coming. And that's the rotation and that's the rhythm and how you have to proceed with these human beings. Because a child today, unfortunately, doesn't have the childhood that I used to have or anybody that you had to do 10 sports at the same time. And in school we did six hours of academics and then five hours of sports, running day and night and being a normal child. Now it's with the computers, with other things, and they forgot that besides your brain and everything else, you have also to take care of your body. And that, unfortunately... And Romania was completely ignored.

• Speaker #0

  Right. I would like to come back to the club, to Stejari. You said it's not about sports specifically, but it's still a special place. What makes it, if you can say, special?

• Speaker #1

  If you talk about Stejari, we have to start with the beginning. And the beginning was 300 apartments that supposedly were of a high class, that we did it. I think that we sold only one, two, three or something like that. My three children bought one each. And then Christy Kivu, coach of Inter Internationale Milano, bought one and he still has it. And the rest we just rented out. And now with the foundation that we have, the whole property went into funds of the foundation. It doesn't belong to me anymore. Then we did. the sport location, but the sport location to serve those 2,000 people that are in those 500 apartments. Then a year and a half ago we built another 200 more apartments here, and the club is completely filled up, being the fitness room or being the exercise room and so on and so on. With the time, considering that we didn't need a big room. upstairs here for meetings and other events. So we split it in four things. One is gymnastics for little children, very little children. Another one is judo. Another one is taekwondo or sports of Japanese level and so on. And from here, from this glass of water, a drop come here and there out. We have a champion, a European champion. Jiu-Jitsu and sports of that, we had some good judo athletes that they came out of here because these children are coming every single day here in these little rooms. But then again, we didn't do this for sports, you know. It just happened and mainly they are the tenants. Of the apartments here that they send the children here to the kindergarten that we have at the entrance there and even that kindergarten we made it with An hour inside, an hour outside. That would be the ideal for a child of two years, three years old. It's raining, it's snowing, it's whatever. He has to have a normal life and to learn the first thing in his life is to get up, not to fall down. To fall down, he's going to do that by himself, but he has to learn how to get up. and fast and not crying and so on and so on. But that's what we did here. And yes, we have a lot of success. We could keep the quality because that's the main thing here. That we keep the quality that was in the first day. Only try even to improve it as much as we can.

• Speaker #0

  You mentioned that the residential project was first, then came the club and they grew. Only with the club together. So even if a champion in sports is an exception, people still come. They're attracted to this club, to sports, they want to do sports. How tied in is the concept of well-being to a healthy life, a businessman? Can you be a businessman without being into sports?

• Speaker #1

  I don't think I was a talented athlete. I was a very good athlete. Very good physically because I had a normal life since I was two year old, three year old. And all my life was sports, but no landing, but a lot of work. And I always preferred a sportsman, a tennis player, a hardworking man than one with a talent. Now, coming back, if you just mixed up. An Elie Nastase with a lot of talent. But Elie Nastase never worked in his life. He just played. That was his life to play and to play tennis. And automatically he had to work by playing. Now, there are players that my biggest talent probably was to be a coach. And I took five, six children. and I made them world champions, starting with Villas, with Boris Becker, with Safin, with Ivanicevic and so on. But then again, which one was the best one? Probably Villas, because with zero talent, eight hours every day, that player was there. Without asking if it's raining, snowing or anything else, he did his job. And he became number one in the world by different rankings. And he was a winner of the Grand Slams. I think even now he has the record because he had 57 matches won in a row. And in nine months, he lost only one encounter at Wimbledon, and the rest from May to December, he won everything. That was the Argentinian Guillermo Villas. You cannot compare, and you should not compare him with Boris Becker or with Nastassi. Nastassi had more talent than all of them together, and he is... succeeded in a lot of things, probably. Those five Masters that he won, and the French Open and the US Open, was a great, great tennis player and a great personality. Because a personality for an athlete counts as much as his performance.

• Speaker #0

  I would like to ask you, it's not in the questions, but I feel compelled to, when I saw the documentary about Nastase, It was mentioned that you never exchanged a word between you two. That was not a joke. Would you say that was true?

• Speaker #1

  Every human being is different. You know, I mean, for Nastase, his life was tennis. He didn't know anything but tennis. And when he stepped in those tennis courts, his mentality changed. His attitude changed, everything changed in his huge, huge actor with the native talents that very difficult to match. ...match somewhere else. But then again, for him to play tennis four, five hours a day, that was easy because he was playing. For a Borg or a Villas, for example, that was completely different. He had to hit that single ball probably a thousand times in the same spot. Until almost mechanically he could do that, Nastase never did that. Nastase invented those strokes. So, which one do you prefer? I prefer work because I'm more secure about that. A talent is always a lot of possibilities and another mentality. But then again... human being, thanks God, everybody is different.

• Speaker #0

  So as a coach and as a person who's helping children play sports so much, you look for the hard worker and then for the talent?

• Speaker #1

  Today, sport is so demanding that if you don't start at a very, very young age, you don't have a chance anymore. And you start at a young age, yes, a three-year-old, four-year-old, let the child play. But let the child get hooked to this playing. And the more he plays, the more he's going to like what he does. And that's physically and mentally. And, how I say the sport is not only a sport, he's becoming much stronger as a human being, physically, has to think about what he does in his sport and everything, so he's using his brains as well. And he's going to the second stage after six, seven years old. Because if a 12-year-old, if he doesn't start, To do the physics then, it's too late at 15, 16. You do your basic of your work in physics before 12 and 16, something like that. Look at Simona Halep. Simona Halep, an unbelievable talent, intelligent girl, everything that you want. But unfortunately, in my book... Whoever had her when she was 12, 13, 14, 15, because after 15 she made the decision on her own. But she was used to practice an hour and she stayed with that hour. Of course, having the talent that she had was easy for her, or not easy, but possible for her to achieve what she did. And once again, she's the only one who brought to Romania the Moimbudon home. Romanian people should never forget that. You don't have too many Moimbudon winners in the senior and junior, we still had some. But unfortunately, they have not transformed themselves. Federer or Djokovic or Nadal or something like that.

• Speaker #0

  I wanted to ask you, looking ahead 10 years, let's say, do you think sport will be less accessible or more accessible? Will it only take place in a few places like this, other centers that you finance, or will we realize its importance?

• Speaker #1

  You see, tennis was a very, very expensive sport in my time. And because being so expensive, very few people could practice. You need a racket, it was unbelievably expensive in my time when I was a junior. I had to work one month to get a salary for one month work to buy a racket at that time. Tennis balls. When we have two English Schlesinger tennis balls, we play weeks and weeks with two men, both not changing it at seven games and doing this and doing that. The things have evaluated a lot. Tennis has become much, much, much, much cheaper than before. A tennis racket can play The way it is today, the tennis racket, it's available even for 20 euros. So almost everybody can do that. And any club, other juniors, they can offer you a racket, even the tennis shoes and so on, who were prohibited at our time. Yes, they are. Cheaper sport with one football you have 22 players and thank you very much goodbye and if you have a pair of shorts that they are green or black or yellow you can hit tennis football with any shorts or something like that yes after that you need a team uniform if you're good enough and you grow up in that sports but sport is not anymore a commodity That it's expensive. And most of the nations that they have some guidance and looks for the future, considering sports one of their first priorities, look at Hungary. Hungary, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, when Orban and ex-football players Decided that the sport is the number one priority. In every single sport they exploded. Why? Because they had the possibilities and so on. We unfortunately wiped up all the infrastructure that we had in the communist time. Because we had, and everybody those days could do sport for free. You know, even we. Yes, play with the Romanian rackets made in Reagan, as long as we could play with that and doing a plastic net for the rackets. But today it's different. The only thing that we ruined completely the infrastructure. We didn't build anything in place. And the school and the kindergarten and so on, the sport is inexistent. And that has to be changed if somebody wants the Romanian nation to be back in year 2000, when the heritage of the era of communism was there, at the Olympics in Sydney, where we made 26 medals, 14 gold. And women's gymnastics, we didn't have. one opponent and we were stolen two medals with Andrei Redukan. But that's the situation.

• Speaker #0

  And today, if you could talk to the next generation of figures in sport, in business, what would you tell them?

• Speaker #1

  Listen, I always say that I was privileged even in the old communist regime for only one reason. Because of our sport, I had a passport in my hand. When 99.9% of the people they didn't. And I could go and come back. And I always did that. I always say that it doesn't matter how much the people love you when you are an athlete. One day in your life, that life is going to stop. It's normal. Might be a 35-year-old, somebody like Djokovic goes to 40. A gymnast at 22, 23 years old was there. Stop, and so on and so on. An athlete, when he stops, for sure tomorrow is going to come another one that is going to run a little bit faster, is going to throw the disc or the javelin farther, is going to jump higher. That's going to be different. And the public are going to get in love with that one. But as long as those people, they love you, they would respect you, once you stop, then no Harvard, no Stanford, no London School of Economics or any other university in this world can compare with the life that you had in I take a tennis player. Knowing 100 countries, knowing every single... A big shot that is in this world, economic or political or something like that. And if that, those guys, even after you stop, doesn't matter what you do. You can be a coach, you can be a commentator, you can be a professor, you can be a science guy, you can be a businessman, a banker or anything, anything. Then the contacts are still there and they are going to answer your phone. But that's the choice of everybody. After you finish, the life just starts. Then you jump into a barrel with ice water. That's called life.

• Speaker #0

  It's both an end and a beginning.

• Speaker #1

  Okay.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. Thank you so much for sitting down. I thank you.