World's strongest kid

Giuliano Stroe (born 18 July 2004) is a Romanian bodybuilder and gymnast. Giuliano Stroe has been lifting weights since he was two-years-old in Florence, Italy where his family lives. Giuliano's father Iulian, said he has been taking Giuliano with him to the gym ever since he was born, but he is careful not to push Giuliano too hard. Stroe insists his son's workout schedule isn't excessive. "He is never allowed to practice on his own, he is only a child and if he gets tired we go and play," Iulian said.

In 2009, he was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records after setting the record for the fastest ever 10 m hand-walk with a weight ball between his legs. Stroe performed the stunt in front of a cheering live audience on an Italian TV Show, and has become an Internet sensation as hundreds of thousands of people have watched the clip of him performing the stunt on YouTube.



On February 24, 2010 he broke the world record for number of air push-ups, which is an exercise where push-ups are performed without letting your feet touch the ground. Stroe managed 20 'air push ups' beating his previous record of 12, live on Romanian TV.



On the same TV show, he broke another world record, for 'the human flag' - an exercise in which he had to support all the weight parallel to the ground, the hands hanging by a bar.

Gabriela Szabo

The Romanian athlete Gabriela Szabo is one of the names that made history at the Olympics and World Championships and she counts amongst the greatest athletes of the last decades. Recently retired from the sport career, Gabi Szabo remains a symbol of overpassing one’s limits as she continues to be a fighter both for her own goals and the community’s.


As a child, Szabo participated in swimming and gymnastics. When it became apparent that she wasn't going to be good enough to make the Olympics, she switched to track. At the age of 13, Szabo was discovered by coach Gyongyossy Zsolt while dominating a 600m race. She then left her native Bistriţa to train at the prestigious Rapid Bucharest Sports Club. As a 15-year-old in 1991, Szabo won the European Junior 3,000m title, then went on to repeat that win in '92, '93 and '94. She also won gold (1994) and silver (1992) medals at that distance at the World Junior Championships.


She made a smooth transition to the senior level, winning bronze medals at the European Championships and the World Cup. And at age 19, she became the youngest World Indoor Champion in history, winning the 3,000m. At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Szabo finished second to Russia's Svetlana Masterkova in the 1,500m. That silver medal was a great disappointment to Szabo, who had expected and promised gold. Earlier in the Games, she had failed to qualify for the 5,000m final -- an event that was considered her best chance for a medal. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, Szabo outkicked Ireland's Sonia O'Sullivan in the 5,000m to win the gold medal and erase the disappointment of Atlanta. Later in the Games, she came back to win a bronze medal in a tactical 1,500m race. Szabo has become so well-known in Romania that she finds it difficult to train at home. Instead, she has spent much of her time training on a farm near Potchefstroom, South Africa. While there, she can avoid media attention and train in relative seclusion, with only her husband/coach, her physiotherapist and cook nearby. On October 2, 1999, Szabo, 24, and her coach, Gyongyossy, 37, were married in Bucharest. They didn't make their much-rumored romance public until shortly before the wedding. Eventually, Szabo would like to devote more time to her family and less time to training. In 2004, after the contest in Birmingham, where she abandoned the race, Gabriela decided to retire. She was hardly believed. No special ceremonies were organized, quite because both the Federation and the supporters hoped that the athlete would change her mind. But Gabriela Szabo didn’t reconsider her decision. In the summer of 2006, during Romania’s international athletics championship, an official retirement festivity were organized in her honour.


The record of Gabriela Szabo: Junior World Champion for 3000 meters - Lisbon 1994; Bronze medal for 3000 meters - Helsinki 1994; Cross World Champion - team - Durham 1995; World Champion - 3000 meters - Barcelona 1995, Paris -Bercy 1997, Maebashi 1999 and 1500 meters - Maebashi 1999; Olympic Vice Champion 1500 meters - Atlanta 1996; World Champion for 5000 meters - Athens 1997 and Sevilla 1999; Winner of the Golden League Circuit in 1997 and 1999; European Vice Champion for 5000 meters - Budapest 1998; World Record for 2000 meters in 1998; Best Athlete of the World in 1999;· World Record for 5000 meters - Dortmund 1999; European Champion for 3000 meters - Gent 2000; Olympic Champion for 5000 meters - Sydney 2000.

Szabo's resume includes a silver medal in the 1,500m at the 1996 Olympics, gold in the 5,000m at the 1997 World Championships, gold at 1,500m and 3,000m at the 1999 World Indoor Championships, gold in the 5,000m at the 1999 World Outdoor Championships, and most recently, gold in the 5,000m and bronze in the 1,500m at the 2000 Olympic Games. In 1999, she was named Athlete of the Year by the IAAF, Track & Field News and Athletics International. She currently holds two world indoor records: 2,000m (5:30.53) and 5,000m (14:47.35). In 1999, Szabo swept all the 3,000m races in the seven-meet Golden League series, earning half of the $1 million jackpot awarded to athletes who remain undefeated through the series. She and Danish 800m runner, Wilson Kipketer each earned $500,000, and by the end of the year, Szabo had become the first female athlete to win more than $1 million in prize money in one year.


"Today I feel great when I walk on the street and people come and tell me « Thank you for what you’ve done». This means that my work was not in vain. This matters the most. At the world competitions I was representing Romania, which is a nation, so I had a responsibility and I didn’t want to disappoint those waiting, quite out, in front of the TV sets. When you appear there, you have a responsibility, you are not Gabriela Szabo anymore, but you are Romania. Only in grand prix it is you, but in world contests you are Romania."

The Superstar

Elisabeta Lipă (born October 26, 1964 in Siret, Suceava County) is a retired rower from Romania, born under the name of Elisabeta Oleniuc. She is the most decorated rower in the history of the Olympics, winning five golds, two silvers and one bronze. She is the only person to win a gold medal in the two premiere rowing events: the single scull and the eight oared boat.


Rowing came into this superstar’s life at the age of 14, in 1979, when a recruiter visited her school at her hometown Botoşani. This person obviously saw the potential in young Elisabeta and in three weeks she was training in Bucharest at the Olympic Rowing Center.


At the age of nineteen, she debuted at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, where she win the double sculls final. In 1988, at Seoul, she earned a silver medal in the same event, and the bronze medal in the quadruple sculls without coxswain. In 1992, at Barcelona, Lipă repeated the second place finish in the double sculls. The next day, Elisabeta led the single sculls from start to finish to earn her second career gold medal. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, she placed ninth in the single sculls, but then won another gold medal as a member of Romania's coxed eight with coxswain crew. With this race, she became the first rower in Olympic history to win six medals. Lipă competed in her fifth Olympics in 2000 at the age of 35. At the Sydney Games she helped Romania defend its title in the eights, thus becoming the oldest oarswoman to win a gold medal in the eight with coxswain event at the Olympics. At the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, Elisabeta Lipă again won the gold medal in the eights. Through this performance, she became the only woman to hold five gold medals at the Olympic Games. Only the 5 consecutive golds by Great Britain's Sir Stephen Redgrave can match Lipă's Olympics rowing achievements. At the World Championships, she won one gold, ten silvers, and two bronzes.


Many would say that athletics and sports are sometimes more a game of fate than a test of endurance, and ‘you win some-you lose some’ but people like Elisabeta disprove this by performing consistently under high pressure – the pressure of their country’s expectations, the pressure they have from within and the pressure of the moment. After her decision to retire (following her last Olympics victory, 2004), she said ‘It was my last race. I am very happy because I won five gold medals in six participation in Olympic games. I dedicate the medal to me’. She was awarded the 2008 Thomas Keller Medal (the 'Oscar' of rowing) at the Rowing World Cup in Lucerne, and now she works as general with a star in the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs.