The champions of 2025
The rower Magdalena Rusu
Florin Orban, 21.10.2025, 13:45
In 2025, Romanian athletes won 5 gold medals at the world championships in the various events they took part in. Two of these came from rowing. At the World Championships in Shanghai, Romania competed in 12 events, and in 6 of them Romanian athletes climbed the podium.
Simona Radiş and Magdalena Rusu took part in the double sculls and mixed 8+1 races, and won gold medals. In double sculls, on the very first day of the Championships, the two athletes passed the heats with the best time, then went to the semifinals where, again, they recorded the best time. In the final, the Romanians, the defending European champions, led the entire race. On the last leg, they broke away decisively and crossed the finish line over 4 and a half seconds ahead of the French boat, ranked second. The United States crew came in third place.
We will talk about the victory in the mixed 8+1 and about Simona Radiş in our column tomorrow. Today, we focus on the career of Magdalena Rusu.
Born in Vaslui (east), on September 30, 1999, Rusu stood out alongside the Romanian women’s 8+1 crew, with whom she achieved her first great performance in 2019: the gold at the European Championships in Lucerne, Switzerland. She then won gold medals at all the continental championships that followed, plus the World Championships in 2022 and 2023.
She is therefore entering her seventh year of top level sports and has high hopes for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. After she finished 6th with the women’s 8+1 crew in 2021, in Tokyo, in Paris 2024 the girls got their revenge, and Maria – Magdalena Rusu won the first Olympic gold medal in her career. (AMP)
