The heart betrayed Ruxi Dumitrescu, who “passed away” at the age of 46. The former player of Vrilissia, Panathinaikos and the Greek national team (she was naturalized Greek) was the mother of a boy, Philip, whom she had from her marriage to our late Olympian, Alexandros Nikolaidis.
But the two had separated and Dumitrescu had been living in Romania for the last few years and running an academy in the field of net.
The news of her death was announced by the Romanian Volleyball Federation.
Panathinaikos said its own “goodbye” to its iconic captain, Ruxi Dumitrescu.
His announcement in detail:
The Panathinaikos Athletic Club expresses its deepest condolences for the unexpected loss of the iconic captain of the women’s volleyball team, Ruxi Dumitrescu.
The Association was deeply saddened by the news of the death of Ruxi Dumitrescu, who passed away from a heart attack at the age of just 46.
Dumitrescu was the emblematic figure of Finnish girls in modern history and in fact for a few months she was the ambassador of Panathinaikos in Romania.
It was a small token of the Association’s respect for the athlete who held up the green flag.
Born in the city of Valcea, she started her volleyball career with Dacia Pitesti in Romania, and was international both with the Romanian national under-20 team from 1992, and with the women’s team, when she competed at the Volleyball World Championship in Brazil at the age of 17. .
In 1997, she came to Greece for the Vrilissi team that won a championship and three Greek cups. Ruxi Dumitrescu has written her own history with the green colors and honored the green jersey from 2003 to 2010.
In total with Panathinaikos he won 6 A1 championships (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010), 7 Greek Cups (2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010), while he was twice awarded MVP in Cup finals ( 2005, 2008). At the European level, he won second place in the Challenge Cup (2009).
He returned in 2013 and competed for one season with Iraklis Kifisias.
She competed with the Greek National Team for five years starting at the 2004 Olympic Games in the first participation of women’s volleyball in an Olympic event and won the silver medal at the 2005 Mediterranean Games in Spain.
As a memorial, we keep some of her words that she had said regarding the Association in the past
-“If I might go back in time, I would have come to Panathinaikos earlier”.
-“The world of Panathinaikos has passed me by. They made me Panathinaikos and this is how I express myself. I have been accused by many of speaking like a fan and I shouldn’t do that because I am an athlete. But I’m doing this because that’s how I feel.”
-“The flag of Panathinaikos is one and has the Shamrock on it. We athletes are passers-by from Panathinaikos”.
“I want to thank the people of Panathinaikos because they always respected us and did not pay attention to our appearance but to our way of playing. And if we played in an astronaut uniform, we would still receive the same applause.”
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