Alina Popa

Alina Popa (born 1978) is a Romanian former professional female bodybuilder who lives in the United States. She grew up in Brăila, Romania, and from the age of 12 competed in track and field, at first to lose weight. She studied English and Romanian, with a teaching degree and literature, at the University of Galați, where she belonged to the university sports club and graduated in 2002, and she later studied culinary arts at the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, graduating in 2015. At 18 she walked into a gym in Brăila to keep fit and fell in love with bodybuilding, began reading bodybuilding magazines in 1998 and admired a woman there preparing for the National Junior Championship, then a trainer in a second town saw her potential and urged her to compete.