Rusnacenco Natalia

About

Natalia Rusnacenco, born on May 13, 1969, in Tiraspol, began her handball career at the Olympic Reserve Sports School in her hometown, under the guidance of her first coach, Galina Vasilkova, and later continued with coaches Valentin Popov and Stepan Koev. She debuted in the USSR youth team, quickly reaching the senior national team, with which she won the bronze medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, playing one match as a goalkeeper. After the fall of the USSR, she moved to Austria, representing the new country at the 1992 (Barcelona) and 2000 (Sydney) Olympic Games, where her teams finished in 5th place, accumulating over 100 caps for the USSR and 255 for Austria. At the club level, she played for Spartak Kiev, with whom she won the European Champions Cup twice, then for WAT Fünfhaus, Hypo Niederösterreich (with six European Champions League titles between 1990-2000, and Austrian national championships), a short stint at Fjellhamar in Norway, and McDonald’s Wiener Neustadt. These achievements marked her as one of the most decorated handball players in the history of European handball, with a height of 186 cm that gave her an advantage in the goalkeeper position. After retiring, she worked as a supervisor at the sports school in Südstadt, Maria Enzersdorf. Natalia Rusnacenco is a mother of two sons: Alexei, who plays ice hockey in the Tyrolean league, and Mikhail, a handball player who played for teams such as Füxe Berlin. She settled in Zös, near Vienna, with her family, maintaining her ties to her Moldovan origins through performances that brought glory to the Transnistria region and the Republic of Moldova, being recognized as one of the country's emblematic athletes in Olympic contexts.