BUCHAREST — A 23-year-old professional water polo player is dead, as athletes in all sports continue dropping dead at disturbing rates.
In order to draw the best conclusions possible in these cases, it’s important to have a general understanding of the actual sport. Water polo is said to have originated in the United Kingdom in the mid-1800s. It is a full-contact, violent water sport that was once referred to as water rugby.
A water polo team consists of a goalkeeper and six field players for each team. Thus there are 14 total players in the water at any given time. Simply put, players score goals by throwing the ball into the net. Teammates can pass the ball in any direction to each other to best position themselves to attempt a goal. They can also “dribble” the ball by pushing it in front of them. You’re only allowed to hold and throw the ball with one hand. Only the goalies can use both hands to block shots. You have 30 seconds to attempt a goal on each possession. There are four, 8-minutes periods in a game.
There are several ordinary fouls in the game that result in turning the ball over to the other team. Those fouls include, but are not limited to, grabbing ball with two hands, splashing, and pushing players underwater who are not in possession of the ball. Major fouls include kicking and striking players, foul language, and disrespecting the referee. Still, players find ways to physically attack their opponents. It’s just part of the game. Players are ejected after three major fouls.
The Hungary men’s water polo team has the most Olympic gold medals (9), with Great Britain, Italy and the former Yugoslavia each with three. Serbia is the reigning Olympic champion.
Women’s Olympic water polo commenced in 2000. The United States has won three consecutive gold medals.
Death of Andrei Drăghici
Mr. Andrei Drăghici was born in Oradea, Romania, near the Hungarian border, and about 370 miles (596 km) northwest of Bucharest. His father, Cristian Drăghici, played professional soccer for the former FC Bihor Oradea in the 1980s. Andrei started playing water polo at CS Crișul Oradea, an athletic club in his hometown, when he was 9 years old. Mr. Drăghici said in an April 2018 interview that water polo became his life’s passion from that point forward. The entire interview is in the Romanian language. But some rough translations showed that the then-18-year-old set his goals at a young age.
“I play on the positions of inter and extreme right. I finished junior year last year at Steaua Bucharest and this year I am a senior at Corona Sportul Studentesc and flirted with the national team only in juniors, in U19 and U17, otherwise I was not selected for seniors, and hope to make the national senior team as well.”
Mr. Drăghici was, most recently, a member of the CS Dinamo București water polo club. The team was playing a Super League match against Rapid Bucharest on March 26. It was during the fourth period of the game when Dinamo missed an attempted goal. The team swam back towards the opponent’s goal to defend. But Mr. Drăghici stayed behind, holding the edge of the pool. The opponent’s coach, according to DigiSports, jokingly asked Mr. Drăghici “what are you doing?” He replied, “I’m sorry.”
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One report says Mr. Drăghici exited the pool and collapsed from the bench. The team’s Facebook page said he lost consciousness in the pool, and was carried by both teammates and opponents. Medics immediately administered CPR, but it was too late. Mr. Drăghici was pronounced dead less than an hour later. The team made clear that Mr. Drăghici had no known medical issues.
But a few days later, another Romanian website claimed Mr. Drăghici died from “a congenital heart disease called atrial septal defect.” In other words, they want us to believe that neither Mr. Drăghici nor his professional athletic club that runs physical checkups on him, knew about this alleged congenital heart problem.
A woman named Maria emailed The COVID Blog™ claiming to be in contact with Mr. Drăghici family. She said Mr. Drăghici was double-vaxxed with AstraZeneca and had the Pfizer booster. The only other corroboration of this is a story on a website called Information Libera. A commenter said the same thing. Coincidentally or otherwise, the author of the foregoing article is also named Maria.
So is it normal for water polo players to die during a game?
Of course mainstream media and vaxx zealots believe nobody has ever been killed or maimed by these shots. So all we can do is look at the history of water polo and determine the likelihood of this happening anytime before 2021. Water polo is a physical and violent sport. So like football, it’s possible, but not probable, to die from blunt force trauma in water polo. But we found no such cases.
A 17-year-old California girl died via drowning on January 16, 2002. She was a member of her high school water polo team. But the circumstances of how and why she drowned are a bit strange. A 24-year-old San Jose State University water polo player died of drowning on October 13, 2015. A 14-year-old boy from Utah died via drowning while playing water polo in 2021. A Weather Channel report found a fatality rate in girl’s high school water polo of 0.42 per 100,000 participants. Note that there are only about 43,000 total U.S. high school water polo players between boys and girls.
Obviously you must be an exceptional swimmer to play water polo. This blogger did not learn to swim until age 30. A U.S. Navy Seal had this immersion program where we stayed in a hotel for four days, with actual pool time lasting up to 12 hours per day. The teacher allowed students to “drown,” meaning inhale water and fill your lungs if you couldn’t stay afloat, then cough it all up. Thus it’s easy to appreciate the difficulty of a sport like water polo, and the anxiety and panic that comes from potential drowning.
The few deaths we could find related to water polo were via drowning. And again, these are some of the best swimmers in the world. From what we could find, nobody has just collapsed and/or lost consciousness spontaneously unless it was a concussion from blunt force.
Young athletes will continue dying like this for the next two years. And it will all be chalked up as coincidence by mainstream media and most of the victims’ families. But at least victims will be remembered here as casualties in this war on humanity.
Stay vigilant and protect your friends and loved ones.
https://thecovidblog.com/2022/04/02/andrei-draghici-23-year-old-romanian-water-polo-player-exits-swimming-pool-during-a-game-collapses-and-dies/