Background
Badea was born in Bucharest in 1970, the youngest of four children.
Badea was born in Bucharest in 1970, the youngest of four children.
She graduated from the National Academy of Physical Education and Sport in 1995.
After her retirement she became a coach, then a sport administrator. Badea took part in her first Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992, where she took the team bronze medal along with Reka Szabo, Elisabeta Tufan, Claudia Grigorescu, and Ozana Dumitrescu. Romania went to earn the silver medal in the 1993 World Championships in Essen, then the gold medal in the 1994 World Championships in Athens.
In the team event, Romania was defeated by Italy in the final and took the silver medal.
Badea retired from competition in 2004. In 2013, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the International Fencing Federation.
A year later, Badea won her first major individual title with a gold medal in the World Championships in The Hague. She also won a silver medal in the team event. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta Badea won the gold medal after defeating Valentina Vezzali of Italy and became the first and only Romanian woman Olympic champion.
She is now vice-president of the Romanian Fencing Federation and a member of the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee.
