Romania's Olympic team, made up of 24 athletes, left Bucharest on Sunday for participating in the 22nd Winter Olympic Games due on February 7-23 in Sochi, Russia.

Romanian athletes will compete in 8 of the 15 sport disciplines scheduled at these Olympics: alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, biathlon, ski jumping, figure skating, bobsleigh, luge and skeleton.

As already announced, biathlete Eva Tofalvy, who takes part in the Olympic Games for the fifth time, will bear the Romanian flag at the opening ceremony of the Games.

The delegation also includes about 20 coaches and officials, with Alexandru Epuran as chief of the mission.

Chairman of the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee Octavian Morariu anticipated that the national athletes would get the best results in bobsledding, sledding and skeleton on the first 10-15 places.

"A Romanian sportsman or woman taking one of the first ten places would be like a gold medal to us and their taking one of the first 20 places would be a quite extraordinary performance if we consider how things are currently in winter sports in Romania," said the general secretary of the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee Ioan Dobrescu.

Romania took part in almost all Winter Olympic Games, except for the first ones in 1924 and the ones in 1960. In the 1968 competition at Grenoble, France, Romania won the bronze medal in the men's two-men bobsled event, its only medal in the history of its participating in the Winter Olympic Games.