Moldova
Stereotype: It’s like when you’ve thought about something really, really hard.

Truth: Wait, actually, I think that’s “mulled over.”

Previous Olympic History:
Moldova first competed at the Olympics from 1960-1992 as part of the USSR unified team.  Larissa Alexandrova-Popova, with the help of partner Elena Hloptzeva of Belarus, won the first gold medal for a Moldavian in 1980 in a rowing partner’s competition.  Nicolae Juvavschi won two gold medals along with his partner, Viktor Reneyky (Belarus), in the 1988 games for canoe events. The pair won eight World Championship events together.

Since going solo, Moldova has done exactly what you might expect.  In 2004 it won no medals.  In the 2000 Olympics, it won a silver medal (Oleg Moldovan in a shooting contest, finishing just behind Johnny American) and a bronze medal (Vitaly Grusac in Boxing).  In the 1996 Olympics (the first one the independent Republic of Moldova participated in) they also won a bronze (Sergie Moureiko in Wrestling) and a silver medal.

So keep note: they can tackle, they can punch, they can shoot, and they can row.  Conclusion: you see an armed Moldavian coming at you in a paddle boat, run like hell.

Interesting story about that silver medal: after winning those two gold medals in 1988, and all those World Championships together, the duo of Juvarschi and Reneysky were not selected to represent the USSR unified team at the 1992 games.  Juvarschi (the cute one) was invited to represent Romania, and did make it to two finals, but no medals.  He ended up returning to independent Moldova in 1995 and talked his former partner Viktor (the serious one) into teaming up for one more shot at a medal at the 1996 games.  And sure enough, they won silver, which would become Moldova’s first medal as an independent nation.  Won by a Romanian/Belarusian duo.  WE ARE THE WORLD. WE ARE THE CHILDREN.

2008 Olympic Prospects:

None really.  Well, if any Moldavians team up with a Belarusian in some sort of aquatic vessel competition, I strongly recommend betting on them.

Moldova History:
Moldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe (odd, considering they are so good at rowing and canoeing).  Things could be worse, I guess. I mean… it could be a double-landlocked country in Eastern Europe.  Its capital city is Chişinău (pronounced “Kishee-now”).  The people of Moldova are nearly identical ethnically to Romanians.  The language Moldovan, in fact, is identical to Romanian.  The only difference (as promoted by the USSR, to separate the two countries and their “identities”) is that Moldovan is written in a Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet, and Romanian is written in a Latin alphabet.  In other words, Moldova is what you get if a larger country (China) came along, took over the U.S., split the US into “the U.S.” and “South U.S.”, and decreed that Southerners will now use Chinese characters to write English.  But the words and how to pronounce them and everything else is the same, just that we are now using phonetic Mandarin to write English.  See, it’s a totally different language!  Clever Russians.

The ancient people of this land are the Dacians.  The land has been invaded by the Goths, Huns Bulgars, Slavs, Magyars, Skwiminywiminies, Cumans and Mongols. (One of those isn’t real.  Did you guess which one?  THAT’S RIGHT.  Mongols are pretend!)  And that’s just the first 1,000 years.  The people who resided in Bessarabia (the eastern part of Moldova, by the Black Sea, which was formerly part of the Ottoman Empire when Russia took it over and add it to Moldova) were Cimmerians.  You might remember that name from Homer's Odyssey - the Cimmerians are described as “living beyond the Oceanus, in a land of fog and darkness, at the edge of the world and the entrance of Hades”.  The country of Moldova has yet to be described in better terms.  Please note: the Cimmerians have nothing to do with this:

You may have noticed that the people are called “Moldavians” and not “Moldovans” (though that is acceptable, too).  That’s because the country of Moldova gets its name from the former region of Moldavia, which was part of Romania.  Most of Moldavia was separated out from Romania by the Soviet Union, and renamed Moldova. Have you ever wondered why Europe has been constantly at war since, uh, ever? Has this description of history helped at all? It should have.

Pop Culture:
According to the Rotterdam Index on Happiness, Moldova is the unhappiest country in the world, with only 44% of Moldavians surveyed claiming to be “happy”.  The Republic of Belarus fared slightly better, with 46%.  Those were the two unhappiest countries out of the over 60 countries surveyed. To be fair, Iraq probably would have placed last, but the surveyors couldn’t find enough living people to question.  FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH!

The bottom of the list is littered with former Soviet Union countries (Ukraine, Russia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, even the normally happy Armenians).

The happiest place in the world remains (they have been happy for a long time now) Iceland, with a 97% rating.  Yes, who wouldn’t be happy to find out that instead of actually living in an Ice Land, they in fact live here:

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