After perusing through year-end lists of all of the top stories in Romania for the year, I saw a lot of failures, setbacks, and scandals.

Instead of focusing on all of that, I decided to end the year with the one unabashedly positive story for Romania in 2018 – Simona Halep winning the French Open.

On a brutally hot summer day, Halep overcame Sloane Stephens to win the Roland Garros trophy, the first time a Romanian has done so since 1978.

Whether it was the heat or something else, a lot of the top contenders were knocked out early, including Venus Williams and defending champion Jelena Ostapenko.

But Halep prevailed!

After losing the first set, Halep came back strong to dominate the final two sets.

A few months later, the mayor of Bucharest, Gabriela Firea, organized a huge party to celebrate Halep’s accomplishment.

After making literally everything in the National Arena stadium red, blue, and yellow, Firea gave Halep some flowers and a special medal.

Hilariously, Firea got booed during the event and later tried to spin it as people booing Halep, which caused gales of laughter to ripple across the country.

Literally everyone loves Halep, but the mayor of Bucharest and her PSD party? Not so much.

Firea then resorted to a conspiracy theory about paid agents “salting” the crowd in order to make a spectacle.

Whatever!

Meanwhile, Romanians enjoyed seeing a replica of the Roland Garros trophy near their athletic hero of the year – Simona Halep.

🎾🏆🎾 🏆🎾🏆 🎾🏆🎾

Congratulations Simona Halep, you were the one thing that all Romanians could be unabashedly proud of in 2018!