Tudor Olimpius Bompa was born on December 23, 1932 in the town of Năsăud, in Bistrița-Năsăud County, Romania. He attended his first school classes in his hometown, and in 1949 he moved to the Sports School in Cluj-Napoca. During his junior years, he was part of the national athletics team, and won several silver and bronze medals at the National Championships, in the pentathlon, javelin and discus competitions. In his teens, Bompa played competitive soccer and competed in sprint and pentathlon. After an ankle injury, he swapped to rowing, which he found difficult as it is an endurance sport rather than a strength sport that he had been used to through his track and field career. At the 1958 European Rowing Championships, he won a silver medal in the coxed four event. He attended the courses of the Institute of Physical Culture and Sports, a prestigious sports academy in the Romanian capital city, Bucharest, which he graduated at the age of 24, in 1956. Between 1956 and 1970, he served as Director of the Central Army House Sports Club, as an assistant professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Timișoara and the University of Bucharest, and as Athletic Director at Politehnica Timișoara Sports Club. Starting in 1960, he laid the foundations of new training methods for performance athletes, which were first published in the journal "Studies and Research" Politehnica University of Timișoara. In 1970 Bompa emigrated to Canada, where he attended Masters studies at York University, in Toronto, between 1972 and 1974. In 1975 enrolled in the doctoral studies program at State University of New York at Buffalo, graduating with a Ph.D. degree in 1979 with thesis "Mechanical analysis of the action of the arms". He was also conferred a Ph.D. degree by the Free University of Brussels, in Belgium.
Honors
Bompa has received 23 honors in 21 countries, including Life-Long Achievements Awards, NSCA, in Las Vegas, 2014. He has also received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa, Politehnica University of Timișoara, 2017. His most prominent book, Periodization:Theory and Methodology of Training has been voted Year Book, 2018, a best seller, and Best Sports Science Book of 2018.
Coaching career
Bompa trained several Olympics and World Champion medal winners. He trained Mihaela PeneÈ™ between 1963 and 1964. The 17-year-old became the Olympic champion at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo with a 60.54-meter throw in the first attempt. He also trained Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson who won the gold medal in the 100-meter sprint with a new world record of 9.79 seconds at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and several medalists in rowing at the European Championships.
Books
Bompa has published 19 books; some of them have been translated into 22 languages, and have sold over one million copies.
