Laura Cârlescu-Badea

Laura Cârlescu-Badea had a 23-year career at top-level fencing, winning 22 medals at the Olympics, World Championships, and European Championships. The highlight was winning the 1996 Olympic gold medal in individual foil. She won two World titles, in the individual foil in 1995 and the team foil in 1994, adding five silver medals and two bronze medals. Cârlescu-Badea won four European Championships – in individual foil in 1996-97 and 2002 and in team foil in 2004. She also won four silver medals and two bronzes at the Europeans. During her career Cârlescu-Badea was a superior officer in the Romanian Army (1988-2004), rising to the rank of colonel.

Cârlescu-Badea later became a fencing coach at the School Sports Club No. 3 Steaua Bucaresti. She served as President of the Athletes Commission (2001-05) for the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee. She later became a sports administrator with numerous roles; member of the rules commission of the FIE, Director of Olympic Education of the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee (2005-12), Romanian Ambassador for Sports, Tolerance and Fair Play at the Council of Europe (2004-11), Member of the Science and Sports Council in Romania (2006-09), and Director of the Romanian Olympic Academy, beginning in 2011.

Cârlescu-Badea graduated from the National Academy of Physical Education and Sports in 1995, and obtained two master’s degrees, one in 2003 from the University of Bucharest and one in sports management and marketing in 2007 from A.I. Cuza University. In 2008 she earned a PhD in sports with a thesis entitled “Contributions to Clarifying the Relationship between Motor Intelligence and Capacity for Effort in High-Level Fencing.”