Athletes from Ungheni returned with three gold medals and one bronze from the Republic of Moldova senior athletics championships, held at the Dinamo Stadium in Chișinău on 30 June–1 July 2026. Of the three titles, two are in the senior category — the most valuable, the adult category — and were won by Ecaterina Cernat and Gheorghe Buzulan.
Cernat dominated the 5000 m: she crossed the finish line in 18 minutes and 7 seconds, more than two minutes ahead of the next runner, Anna Vasluian of Bender. Her name is not new on the town’s list of distance runners — the Ungheni city hall includes her among the municipality’s high-performance athletes.
In the 3000 m steeplechase, Gheorghe Buzulan, of the „RUN Ungheni” club, won the senior title with a time of 9 minutes and 54 seconds, the only one in the race to go under ten minutes. In the same event, his clubmate Severin Parfenie took bronze, in a final with three competitors.
In the men’s 1500 m, the Ungheni runners were even more prominent: Ion Baran ran the fastest time of the whole field, 4 minutes and 17 seconds, while Nichita Railean finished fourth with a personal best close to 4 minutes and 28 seconds. Baran and Railean, however, compete in the youth category, under 18, so the senior 1500 m title went to Andrei Novosiolov, of Sports School No. 3 in Chișinău, who placed just behind Baran. The distinction matters: among seniors, Ungheni has two titles — Cernat and Buzulan; the other results come from the youth categories.
Also from the Ungheni group, Denisa Ananicev ran the 1500 m in 5 minutes and 37 seconds, and Viorel Cepoi set a personal best in the 800 m — both in the youth categories.
The athletes are coached in Ungheni by Mihai Grosu, who runs the „RUN Ungheni” group. On the official lists, the town’s athletes appear under three entities — the „RUN Ungheni” club and the two municipal sports schools — but all of them represent the same town.
The haul is all the more notable because it comes from a small town. More than 200 athletes from across the country competed at this championship, and the medal table is dominated by the big centres — Sports School No. 3 in Chișinău and the clubs from Tiraspol and Bender each collect dozens of medals. Ungheni, with its three golds and a bronze, is among the few small towns to climb the podium alongside them.
Distance running is no accident in Ungheni. On the town’s list of high-performance athletes, kept by the city hall, there are two Olympians raised on long distances: Valentina Delion, who competed at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and is a two-time marathon champion of Romania, and Valeriu Vlas, who took part in the Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000 Games. On that same list is Ecaterina Cernat — who has just added another national title.