Athlete of the Week – Handball player Crina Pintea
She is 36 years old, 1.92 m tall, and plays for the third best team in Europe.
Florin Orban, 09.06.2026, 13:45
Romanian women’s handball achieved on Sunday its best club level result in recent years. CSM Bucharest finished 3rd in the Champions League after winning the bronze medal match. The team coached by Bojana Popović defeated Brest Bretagne, the champions of France, 32–26, climbing onto the podium for the first time in eight years. For Romania’s vice champions, this was the third bronze medal in Europe’s top club competition, after those won in 2017 and 2018. Let us also recall that in 2016, the Bucharest team won the Champions League.
Among the Romanian players, pivot Crina Pintea performed the best. In the bronze medal match against Brest, she scored 5 goals, surpassed only by Slovenian player Elizabeth Omoregie, the team’s top scorer with 8 goals. Pintea also scored 3 times in Saturday’s semifinal lost to Metz. In light of her performances last weekend, Radio Romania International has named her the Athlete of the Week.
Crina Pintea was born on April 3, 1990, in Podu Turcului, a commune in Bacău County (eastern Romania). She made her debut in top level handball at age 20 with Handbal Club Zalău, under coach Gheorghe Tadici. In 2012 she reached the EHF Cup final with Zalău, and one year later the semifinals of the same competition. In 2015, Crina entered negotiations with HCM Baia Mare, which led Tadici to remove her from the team. She then signed with the German club Thüringer, with which she won the Bundesliga in 2016.
In 2017 she moved to the French team Issy Paris Hand, later known as Paris 92. During the 2017–2018 season she was named the best pivot in the French women’s handball league. Her contract with Paris 92 was later taken over by the Hungarian club Győr, with which she won the Champions League in 2019. She then spent a short period at CSM Bucharest before returning to Győr for another season. Since 2022 she has been playing for CSM. She made her debut for Romania’s national team in 2012. Three years later she won a bronze medal with the national squad at the World Championship in Denmark. (EE)
