BIOGRAPHY
A twin, Cristina Varzaru went from being born in 1979 in the small town of Corabia, close to the Bulgarian border, to being made an honorary citizen of Bucharest in 2016.
How she got there was down to her glittering career, which saw her win the EHF Champions League four times in a 10-year period. After turning professional in 1998 and winning three league titles with CS Oltchim Râmnicu Vâlcea, she moved to the Romanian capital with Rapid București in 2002, adding another league success a year later.
By this time, she was already a senior international, having made the step up from youth level where she and Romania won gold at both the 1998 U19 EHF EURO and 1999 World Youth Championship. She came closest to standing atop a podium at senior level at the 2005 World Championship, where Romania took silver. In 2010, she added EHF EURO bronze to her collection.
However, she won regular gold medals in the EHF Champions League. After departing to Viborg in Denmark in 2005, she won the elite club competition in her first season, before adding successive titles in 2009 and 2010 - beating her first club, Râmnicu Vâlcea, in the final in the latter. After securing 12 trophies in Denmark, she returned to Bucharest in 2012, joining her former rivals CSM București, with whom she won a fourth Champions League in 2016 before retiring a year later.
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