Moldovan freestyle wrestler

Ludmila Cristea (born March 27, 1986 in Ştefan Vodă) is an amateur Moldovan freestyle wrestler, who played for the women's lightweight category. Since 2006, Cristea had won a total of four medals (three silver and one bronze) for the 55:kg cl* at the European Wrestling Championships.

At age fourteen, Cristea made her official debut, as a judoka, for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, where she competed in the women's lightweight category (57:kg). Unfortunately, she lost the first preliminary round match to Netherlands' Jessica Gal, who successfully scored a yuko, but incurred a penalty for playing outside the contest area, at four minutes.

Eight years after competing in her first Olympics, Cristea qualified for the women's 55 kg cl* this time, as a member of the Moldovan wrestling team, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She defeated Venezuela's Marcia Andrades in the preliminary round of sixteen, before losing out the quarterfinal match to Canadian wrestler and Olympic silver medalist Tonya Verbeek, who was able to score three points each in two straight periods, leaving Cristea without a single point.

References

External links

• Ludmila Cristea at United World Wrestling
• NBC 2008 Olympics profile at the Wayback Machine (archived May 16, 2012)