 But I went after them to defeat them.”

She joined in 2001 the fencing section of CSA Steaua under coach Cornel Milan.The same year she posted her first significant result with a gold medal at the Cadet World Championships and a team silver medal at the Junior World Championships, both in Gdańsk.These achievements prompted the Romanian media to compare her to Olympic foil champion Laura Badea-Cârlescu, but she took exception to the comparison, claiming she wanted to do better than Badea.