Leon Rotman is a Romanian sprint canoer who competed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Background
Rotman is Jewish, and was born to a working-class Jewish family, he took up several sports in the years immediately after World World War II and was fascinated by canoeing after seeing the famous Czechoslovakian champions January Brzák-Felix and Bohumil Kudrna compete on Lake Snagov near Bucharest in 1953.
Career
He joined the Dinamo Bucharest sports club, in the hope of getting one of the Czechoslovakian-made canoes left by the two in Romania. He would eventually compete at the Olympics on the first canoe ever made in Romania (at the factories in Reghin, Mureş County). He was slightly less successful in other competitions (fifth in the 1957 and 1961 European Championships in C-1 1000 m, and seventh at the 1963 World Championships in C-1 10000 m).