Biography

Andreea started gymnastics at the age of 4 when her parents(Marius and Cornelia) decided that since she was full of so much energy they should sign her up for gymnastics. She started at her home town club, CSS Timisoara. Her first trainers were Marcel Benea and Mariana Tomceanu. From the start her trainers noticed that she had lots of ambition. She won her first national junior championship in 1994. She trained at CSS Timisoara with same trainers until 1997 when she joined the junior team. She then became a member of the senior team in 1999. She was an alternate for Romania at the 1999 World Championships and at the 2000 Olympic Summer Games in Sydney. The next year, 2001, was to be a big year for her. At the Goodwill games in Brisbane she competed on vault and floor. It was not a good competition for her though, she injured her thumb and the head coach, Octavian Belu said he was not satisfied with her performance. The next major competition of the year was the World Championships in Ghent. Before the competition Octavian Belu said that she could do very well on floor and vault but she could also do very poorly. In the team portion of the competition Andreea competed on vault and floor. During one of her training sessions doing a vault, she hit her mouth with her knee and split her lip open requiring eight stitches. She could not eat and could only drink milk through a straw. But, she performed well and helped her team win the gold medal over Russia. She also qualified for the vault final where she went on to finish 5th overall. She is the first one ever from Timisoara to win a gold medal at the World Championships. For her steller performance at the Championships she received a reward for being one of the top athletes of her home county of Timisoara. After the World Championships she went on to compete at the DTB Cup where she placed second on both floor and beam. The winter of 2002 she had been training for the upcoming European Championships when the Romanian coaching staff decided that her and other gymnasts on the team were not disiplined enough, so they sent them to there home clubs. Since then Andreea has been training at her home club of Timisoara. Hopefully she will soon be back in Deva. In the future she hopes to compete at the 2003 World Championships and the 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens.