Octavian Bellu, the golden coach

It is said that every successful man has a powerful woman besides him. To paraphrase this, I can say that every successful gymnast has a powerful coach besides her.

Octavian Bellu is the man from the shadow who contributed to the feminine national gym team for almost 25 years. He is the coach who rose the girls who made the Romanian hymn heard all over the world, the mentor who took care of every member of his team to reach his potential. For all he did, he deserves to be appreciated and rewarded.

This thing happened when he got into Guinness book for being “The most successful coach from all over the world” , having 16 Olympic golden medals and a total of 279 medals from Olympics, Worldwide and European Contests. In 2009, he was included in Gymnastics Hall of Fame, which took place in Oklahoma City, where other successful Romanian gymnasts participated (Nadia Comăneci, Ectaerina Szabo). It was the moment of glory when Octavian Bellu was seen as a golden coach.

He was born on 17 February 1951, in Aquarius’ sign, the sign of artists and he made an art out of gymnastics. He had a straight trajectory and he never turned off his way and he taught his gymnasts the same model. And the way wasn’t always easy to follow. After graduating, he worked 5 years in Education, doing serious efforts to complete his shift. That’s why besides gymnastics, he also taught geography, history and other disciplines unrelated to sports. His luck appeared when he gave up on education to work at the Petrolul Club. The coach confesses that it was a difficult moment in his life, when he had to consider the risk of losing his years of service and his rank to follow an insecure dream to reach victory in gymnastics. His decision proved to be right and many years after that, Octavian Bellu can say that not only he is satisfied by his career, but also by his life. He declared that everything he has and everything he doesn’t have is due to gymnastics.

Romania had him as the coach of the national team till 2005. He was always faithful to his country, in spite of the profitable offers from abroad. He didin’t follow the example of Bela Karoly, his predecessor and many times his comparison term in press, and remained Romania’s coach. He explained that his goal is not to sit on his porch and count his money, risking an imposed schedule, and he prefers to be the coach of the worldwide champion or the Olympic champion than to get rich without constant performance.

Octavian Bellu was state counselor in Presidential Administration. Since 2006, he had occupied the post of President at the Sports National Agency and since 2008 he was named State Secretary in Youth and Sports Ministry. Recently, he has quit his job and there are rumors which say his decision is due to the fact that he was a victim of political games and he had nothing to say there. If these are true, he proves once again that his main aim is to maintain Romanian sports on the top of the worldwide classification in an admirable, noble and honest way.